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OTHER BOOKS BY DR. LOCKE 



A MAN'S REACH 

FREEDOM'S NEXT WAR FOR HUMANITY 

THE TYPICAL AMERICAN 

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRUSADER 



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Daybreak Everywhere 



BY 

CHARLES EDWARD LOCKE 



"Out of the shadows of the night 

The earth rolls into the light; 

It is daybreak everywhere." 

— Longfellow 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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<*$* 
$>i* 



Copyright, 1919, by 
CHARLES EDWARD LOCKE 






S)Ci.A5 2 9 611 



AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

TO 
CHARLES EDWARD LOCKE, JR. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 4 . . 9 

I. The Rebirth of Liberty 11 

II. Time a Just Retributor 27 

III. The New Manhood 41 

IV. The New Dutt 59 

V. Seeing the Blue in the Sky 81 

VI. The New Ministry 107 

VII. Monuments 119 

VIII. The New Gentleness 139 

IX. The Romance op Making a Life — Theodore 

Roosevelt 155 

X. The New Morality 181 

XI. The New Day 203 



FOREWORD 

The sunrise is nature's most marvelous apoca- 
lypse. "When morning gilds the skies" the awak- 
ening heart breaks forth into rapturous praise. 
Nothing seems more interminable than a long 
night of fearful forebodings, but with the morn- 
ing the shadows flee away and renewed hope 
comes with the break of day. The night is the 
promise of the day, and the morning light will 
ever follow the midnight gloom until that ec- 
static eternal morning whose radiant sun shall 
know no setting. 

There have been many glorious mornings in 
the hurrying years, but none more significant, 
because of its glad consummation and its happy 
prophecies, than this auspicious daybreak which 
"dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray." 

"The day begins to break, and night is fled 
Whose pitchy mantle over-veiled the earth." 

We who are alive to-day have the high privilege 
of participating in the most thrilling epoch of all 
history. Never again with pessimistic tones 
should we talk about the world's problems and 
impossibilities, for problems are only opportuni- 
ties, and impossibilities are only calls to imme- 
diate achievement. How can sensible people talk 
any longer about the world getting worse? 

This little volume is an unpretentious con- 

9 



10 FOREWORD 

tribution to the sentiment that there is a steady 
evolution of the good, and that each passing dec- 
ade is witnessing an approach to the fulfillment 
of the scriptural promise: "For evildoers shall be 
cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they 
shall inherit the earth." It is difficult for the 
author to differentiate between a gloomy pes- 
simism and an absolute distrust in the God of the 
ages, and so he is quite impatient with those 
undoubtedly devout people who have become 
obsessed with a depressing outlook upon people, 
things, and events. 

The daybreak of every morning is our daily 
lesson in a sensible optimism. 

"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." 

The Author. 
Los Angeles, California, August, 1919. 



I 

THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 



A soldier boy in France writing home to his 
friends in Los Angeles, under date of November 
13, 1918, says: 

"Dear Folks: My eyes have seen the birth of a new world, 
and I am still dazed with the awe of it. I am glad that I have 
been permitted to contribute my humble part in bringing it 
about. 

"It seemed as I awoke on the morning of the 11th that hell 
itself had broken its bounds and invaded this land. Used as 
I had become to the noise of battle, still the pandemonium of 
that morning seemed terrific as the big guns hurled forth their 
charges of death and destruction with ceaseless roar, as the 
giant shells passed screaming overhead and burst with thun- 
dering crashes, and as the many fleets of airplanes with un- 
muffled engines circled about before heading for enemy terri- 
tory. The air we breathed seemed to be charged with a sense 
of impending events — but what? 

"Suddenly, with an abruptness far more startling than seems 
possible, all noise ceased. The terrible guns became mute, the 
screaming shells flew no more nor burst with their terrific thun- 
dering. Everything became hushed and still, and nature her- 
self stopped breathing and seemed to say 'What next?' But 
soon came stealing up the valley the sound of a church bell, 
then another, and another, till from all directions came the 
sweet tones of church bells that had been silent as the grave 
for four long years. Such a heaven-born sweetness I have 
never heard before, and its effects upon me as I stood there 
with bared head seemed to touch the bottommost depths of 
my soul. 'Peace on earth, good will to men,' I muttered, in- 
stinctively. Truly, I must be viewing the birth of a new world." 



CHAPTER I 
THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 

The eleventh day of the eleventh month of the 
year 1918 will go down into the years as the 
greatest day in the history of humanity. 

There is only one other day which transcends it 
in sacredness and that was the day when a manger 
in Bethlehem became the cradle of a new-born 
King and the angels from heaven sang, "Peace on 
earth, good will to men." That momentous hour 
was the incarnation of human liberty; an angel 
announced it and a celestial chorus, an innumera- 
ble throng of heavenly beings, made glad the 
advent morning. 

November 11, 1918, is the day when the pur- 
poses of the birth of Christ reached their fullest 
fruition. It was the day of liberty's enthrone- 
ment. Might and force had been abjectly de- 
feated, and the "illicit ambitions" of selfishness 
had been forever rebuked, and once more meek- 
ness and love and justice and righteousness have 
been exalted. 

Never was there such a day of jubilation and 
joy. On the advent morning there were no fol- 
lowers of the Incarnated Liberty to make the earth 
echo with happy hallelujahs, and so the angels 
furnished the swelling oratorios; but on Monday, 

13 



14 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

November 11, 1918, a multitudinous host of 
earthly lovers of liberty surged up and down the 
streets and avenues of the cities and towns, and 
along the lanes and highways of the countryside, 
and rejoiced hilariously and thankfully. It was 
the rebirth of liberty. It was another Christmas 
day, and a mighty company of earth's happiest 
souls made the world rejoice as it had never 
before rung with the paeans and praises of right- 
eousness triumphant. 

It marked the end of the holiest war in all his- 
tory, because the most sacred fundamental ideals 
of humanity and of righteousness had been as- 
sailed. An obsessed autocracy, like a mad bandit 
and murderer, held up a peaceful and unsuspecting 
world, and it ruthlessly and brutally trespassed 
upon all the holiest possessions of the soul. The 
law of the jungle was to replace the law of love, 
and might was to be exalted above right, and a 
savage Kultur above all Christian Culture. The 
Ten Commandments were to be abrogated and 
despised, and the Sermon on the Mount thrown 
into the discard; and gentleness and meekness 
and love and justice were all to be unpardonable 
sins. All of this because a Junker militarism was 
intoxicated with a frenzy for world domination. 

And how nearly these human demons came to 
realizing their diabolical designs almost makes our 
heart stand still as we remember that a hundred 
days before the savage Huns were for the second 
time within forty miles of Paris and a few furlongs 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 15 

of the Channel; but a God in heaven and a mighty 
host of invincible chevaliers on earth stood firm 
for liberty, and to-day the most disgraced and 
insufferable personality in history is William 
Hohenzollern, the erstwhile Kaiser and chief of- 
fender of the predatory Potsdam gang. 

As we get farther and farther away from the 
bloody Berlin world-hold-up, the longer perspec- 
tive will help us to a clearer understanding of the 
real causes of the war. More and more shall we 
find that truth and civilization were hanging in 
the balance, and that the enemies of mankind saw 
plainly that military domination could not be 
secured without the utter humiliation and de- 
struction of Christianity. 

We are beginning now to see why womanhood 
was dishonored and childhood was despised, and 
churches and costly cathedrals were destroyed. 
Plainly it was because Christianity glorified 
motherhood and sanctified childhood, and taught 
that love is the greatest thing in the world, and 
that a little child shall lead them; all of these 
sacred ideals were enshrined in the coming of a 
Bethlehem Baby on the first Christmas morning. 

German materialism was very much irritated at 
such weak sentimentalism, and, cooperating with 
a mad militarism armed to the teeth, it purposed 
to invalidate all of the teachings of the lowly 
Nazarene by literally wiping Christianity, its 
Christ, and its Christmas from the earth; and 
thus demonstrating not that love but that hate is 



16 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the greatest thing in the world, not that the meek 
but the mighty shall inherit the earth, and not 
that a little child but that a proud, arrogant, 
defiant, modern Attila with uncontrolled instincts 
of cruelty, should seize the crown from the Beth- 
lehem mother and the scepter from her manger 
Child! But "who was this uncircumcised Philis- 
tine, that he should defy the armies of the living 
God?" Only another haughty garrulous Goliath, 
who was at length shorn of his power, so soon as 
the spirit of righteousness and truth and justice 
became aroused and organized. 

Is it not a tragic irony of fate that the same 
people who gave us all of the tender and exquisite 
legends of old Santa Claus, should also send out 
into the world the most Satanic influence, which, 
in order to establish itself, must betray all the 
romantic traditions of the Christmastide? 

Among the psychological and moral causes of 
the world war there is the conspicuous one that 
for many decades a destructive criticism, which 
was aimed at the very soul of Christianity, had 
been propagated by certain German scholars. 
Materialism and militarism were the other two 
partners in this malevolent triumvirate. Professor 
Cram, in his book, Germany and England, pub- 
lished before the war, says frankly that the 
destruction of Christianity itself was one of the 
ignoble purposes of German scholars. He proph- 
esied the founding of a great world empire under 
the masterful domination of Germany, and de- 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 17 

clared that "Germany is also preparing to create 
a world religion." 

The arrogancy of the Kaiser and Von Hinden- 
burg was equaled by the haughty superiority of 
the defiant scholars and materialists of Germany. 
There were other bandits besides those who car- 
ried swords. Never before was there such a dia- 
bolical conspiracy against Christian ideals and the 
welfare of mankind. The university, and even 
the church, joined in the crusade. Nothing was 
to be left of British and French and American 
ideals — the whole vast world was to be com- 
pletely Germanized. 

It was bad psychology, it was bad militarism, 
and it was bad morals when the Kaiser led his 
fierce assault upon the Christ-child and his mother. 
No man of intelligence or supposed Christian cul- 
ture ever hurled such a bitter defiance in the 
face of high heaven as did Kaiser William when 
he started out to drive the Christmas Child out 
of the affections and loyalty of a Christian age. 
He was so obsessed with his dream of world power 
that he lost his judgment. 

Some faltering folk in these tragic, uneasy, after- 
the-war days have feared for the security of the 
Christian's belief in God. It is well known that 
among the pagans it is a custom to destroy fa- 
vorite idols for not preventing calamity. And so 
to-day there are some people who are talking about 
a "new idea" of God, by which they mean, of 
course, a new God, as if God could be made by men. 



18 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

But it is to be observed that no person who 
has been earnestly devoted to his faith is raising 
any doubtful question at this time; it is only 
people like Mr. H. G. Wells, who acknowledge 
that religion has been given a very small place 
in their lives, but, having experienced a change 
of heart on account of the tragical exigencies of 
those fearful war times, are not only seeking, 
after long indifference, the shelter of holy altars, 
but with startling audacity they arrogate to them- 
selves the right to reconstruct the theology of 
those who, even in the trying ordeals of the world 
crisis, never for a moment faltered in their faith 
in the God of Elijah and of Paul. 

People are very little interested in a new God, 
another Christ. A few years ago a retired college 
president, with astounding arrogance, announced 
a new religion, which was nothing less than a 
recrudescense of Arianism, intermingled with some 
old, moldy, and abandoned mummies from the 
sarcophagi of former ages. 

The statement of this former leader in the 
thought of his generation produced merely a 
seven days' wonder. Who now cares anything 
about it? It has gone to the scrap-heap, where it 
will find good company and undisturbed oblivion 
with the literary vanities of the past. While 
multitudes read Mr. Wells's Mr. Britling Sees It 
Through with great profit, who cares anything 
about his more recent books on his "new religion"? 

No man leaves much of a legacy to humanity 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 19 

who spends his time trying to patch up God, and 
creating little deities of his own, and who is always 
wondering what the world would have missed if 
he had not come to instruct it. An old lady, 
thinking to compliment her minister, said, "We 
never knew what sin was till you came among 
us." 

Dr. Eliot's pragmatic pantheism died in early 
infancy because it was utterly inadequate for all 
moral and spiritual emergencies; it had no carry- 
ing quality, no momentum, no destination! It 
had no pardon for sin, and no hereafter. An 
emasculated Christianity is no Christianity. Men 
will not tolerate a religion to-day that leaves 
Christ out — the supernatural Christ — the Son of 
God — the Son of man. And Mr. Wells is in the 
same predicament. 

A clever liberal preacher in this country gave 
up his pulpit, because he said: "You cannot save 
people's souls by preaching moral essays to them. 
Saving souls may be nonsense, but these earth 
children seem to hunger for some such thing as 
that, for something that has a scheme of sacrifice 
and redemption in it, that lies beyond and behind 
the sky, where is a Person who is more than man." 
And he resigned his pulpit. 

The world does not want a Christ who cannot 
save unto the uttermost. Men will not long wor- 
ship a God which they have made with their 
own hands; and a man seeking for truth will not 
submit to the leadership of anyone who cannot 



20 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

guide to divine levels. A merely human Christ 
cannot redeem the world, will not satisfy the 
soul, nor solve the mysteries. 

The world will never outgrow Christ, because 
he came to heal the world's wounds, and assuage 
the world's sorrows, and solve the world's mys- 
teries, and stop the world's wars, and forgive the 
world's sins, and to point the world to an eternal 
paradise, and to be a friend to a lonely and tired 
and forsaken humanity. 

A soldier 1 tells that at the battle of Lens they 
fought until they were nearly exhausted. He says 
that in one day his command repulsed four 
counter-attacks by the enemy. They kept it up 
four days and nights, working, watching, fighting, 
with only a few moments of sleep snatched now 
and then. When at last they were relieved and 
at midnight started back to their billets eight 
miles in the rear, many of the men dropped out, 
one by one, from sheer fatigue. The others 
plodded on. He says: 

"We had gone back quite a long way when 
those of us who were still trudging ahead heard 
the sound of the bagpipes — faint at first, but 
growing nearer all the time. And they were 
playing, 'The Campbells are Coming!' Instinc- 
tively we straightened our weary backs, held our 
heads higher, and began to march — not to plod. 
It was the brigade pipers; and when they met us 
they wheeled about and played us in, the bag- 

1 Lieutenant Ernest G. Odell in the American Magazine. 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 21 

pipes shrilling 'The Campbells are Coming', and 
'Cock o' the North/ and airs like that." 

Then the pipers went back to pick up the 
stragglers, and they played them in too. Over 
and over again they did this, bringing the men 
by twos and threes, and even one man at a time. 
It was daybreak before the last tired soldier was 
brought back. 

In these fierce and fatiguing battles of life it is 
the music of the old faith and the old truths that 
will buoy our flagging feet. We must keep up the 
old cheery music of Moses and the Lamb until 
we have played and sung a tired and wounded 
humanity safe home — home to the old fireside of 
love— home to the Father heart. A "new God" 
may satisfy foolish philosophers who do not 
acknowledge the need of any God, but a humanity 
that is battling for the freedom of the world, and 
is worn out and wounded, will be satisfied with 
nothing short of the 

"Faith of our Fathers! living still 

In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword." 

This great world crisis is the apotheosis of 
Christianity. The world war was not precipitated 
because of the failure of Christianity, but because 
of the triumphs of Christianity. The temptation 
of Jesus by Satan was not because Christ had 
faltered, but because he was on the threshold of 
mighty achievements. The crucifixion of Jesus 
was not because he had utterly failed in his three 



22 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

years of earthly ministry, but because of his 
transcendent triumphs. 

Kaiserism was an evil born out of due time. It 
sought to prevent the steady growth of freedom 
and democracy. When the Satan of a selfish and 
cruel autocracy saw that a government of and by 
and for the people was rapidly spreading over the 
world, and that imperialism would be doomed un- 
less this onward march could be peremptorily 
stopped, the Kaiser and his conspirators designed, 
and precipitated, and carried on the fiercest, most 
terrible war of the ages. If they had succeeded 
in their base schemes, then pessimistic saints and 
carping critics might have cried out in either 
dismay or triumph that Christianity is a failure. 
And if Christianity had not been able to arouse 
and array itself against this modern diabolism, it 
would have registered a defeat, and might have 
been pronounced a failure; but just as Christianity 
was not a failure in the beginning because "Get 
thee behind me, Satan!" quickly disposed of the 
foul tempter, so once more "Get thee behind me, 
Satan," defeated the arch enemy of God and of 
humanity, and compelled the defiant Beast of 
Berlin to ask for peace terms. 

That Christianity had vitality and wisdom and 
courage and force and stratagem and faith suffi- 
cient to meet this frightful assault upon its ideals 
and its institutions indicates the glory, the di- 
vinity, the permanency, the virility, and the holy 
origin of the good tidings which Jesus lived and 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 23 

died and rose again to establish among men on 
everlasting foundations. 

The overthrow of the Kaiser is Christ's great 
victory over the powers of death and darkness, 
and we have already entered upon a new and 
brighter day. The final overthrow of all the 
forces of evil, and the dawn of the holy millen- 
nium, will be hastened hundreds of years because 
of the victories now being achieved for justice 
and freedom and righteousness. 

To-day, as never before, Christ's is the name 
above every name, and the triumphs of the hour 
are the glorious transfiguration of Christ and his 
gospel of good will and sacrifice. 

A Jewish rabbi invidiously declared the other 
day that in the future events would be measured 
not by A. D. and B. C. but by "Before and after 
the Great War," and that 1914 in the reconstructed 
calendar would be the Year I. 

It would be well for this apostle of modern 
Judaism to reread his Gamaliel and listen once 
more to the old Jewish scholar as he says: "If this 
counsel or this work be of men, it will come to 
nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow 
it." 

Instead of relegating to oblivion the "Year of 
our Lord" and "Before Christ" this great vic- 
torious war for the freedom of humanity will 
more than ever accentuate the birth year of the 
Christ of Bethlehem. 

Never was Christ so regnant in the heart of 



24 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

humanity, and never has any year been more 
characteristically a year of our Lord than the 
year when a savage and brutal military autocracy 
received its death blow. 

I would not claim for myself that I am a con- 
noisseur, but I am quite bold enough to assert 
that I saw an extraordinarily masterful Pygmalion 
in an art store in an Eastern city the other day. 
It was by an English painter and had just arrived 
from London. In the dim background of the 
canvas was the artist's conception molded in the 
clay as is the wont of sculptors. In the foreground 
was the sculptor's perfect ideal carved out of 
purest marble, an exquisite masterpiece of fault- 
less design and proportions. Long and hard had 
been the happy labors of the tireless sculptor to 
compel the marble to surrender its secret and 
realize to him his most perfect dream. It is now a 
complete and brilliant apotheosis of the divinely 
beautiful female form. 

But as Pygmalion has patiently toiled upon his 
masterpiece he has fallen passionately in love with 
this marble creation of his own soul; and the 
ingenious artist represents him as on his knees 
with his head bowed and his hands clinging to the 
feet of the statue in earnest supplication to his 
favorite god to endow his statue with life. As he 
continues his prayer with importuning tenacity, the 
figure is represented as coming gradually to life 
as one hand is stretched upward and the soft pink 
tint of real life creeps into the matchless form. 



THE REBIRTH OF LIBERTY 25 

The further story, not seen of course in the 
painting, is that with rapturous joy the sculptor 
embraces Galatea as a perfect gift from heaven, 
and she becomes his loving wife and the devoted 
mother of his children. 

This noble classic of legendary lore comes to us 
with the exquisite suggestion that we may labor 
with such noble devotion for the perfection of our 
holy ideals that by and by they may become a 
vitalized reality and find faithful exemplification 
in our own humble lives, the source of our su- 
premest joys and the inspiration of our most 
self-sacrificing service to God and humanity. 

Christ is our perfect ideal. When the rich 
young ruler came and asked for an ideal, Jesus 
told him to give all he had to the poor and come 
and follow him. The young man was not willing 
— he considered the sacrifice too great. Unselfish 
ministry to humanity about us is the holiest 
earthly ideal and opens at last the gates of ever- 
lasting glory. If we should endeavor to achieve 
such an ideal, there would be another coming of 
Christ to our home, our church, our country, and 
our world; and when Christ shall thus come in 
humble human lives like our own, then all wars 
and woes will cease, and the peace which passeth 
all understanding shall bless humanity, and lib- 
erty born and reborn shall reach its full fruition 
in the joyous New Day whose sun shall never 
set. 



II 

TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 



Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 

He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; 
His truth is marching on. — Julia Ward Howe. 

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceed- 
ing small. — Frederich von Logaw. 

Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein. — Bible Proverb* 



CHAPTER II 
TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 

There is a statement in the Bible, no less 
startling because it is most familiar, which, with 
notable directness, declares: "Be not deceived; 
God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap." Whether we consider 
this declaration from a biological, psychological, 
civil, military, ethical, or religious point of view, 
it is so uniformly true that it may be accepted as 
an axiom from which there is no deviation. 

It is one of those laws in the natural world 
which have very illuminating analogy in the spirit- 
ual world. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or 
figs of thistles?" Even the most sanguine op- 
timist in the marvelous orchards and fields of 
nature would not be foolish enough to expect to 
find grapes and figs among thorns and thistles, 
and yet why are there tragic illustrations of the 
folly about us continually of persons who are 
otherwise fairly wise concerning the habits of 
shrub and tree life who in their moral habits 
behave as if it were absolutely certain that 
thorns and thistles would produce grapes and 
figs? 

The Creator maintains the order of the universe 
by certain immutable laws of equilibrium and 

29 



30 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

compensation. If a person might sometimes sow 
thistles and reap grapes, it would be likewise just 
as possible that he might sometimes sow grapes 
and reap thistles. There would be great con- 
fusion in all of nature's activities if some condi- 
tions were not inexorably fixed. 

If a horticulturist would be considered an idiot 
as he sought for figs among thistles, why is his 
idiocy any less pronounced when he expects to 
gather the fruits of a well-spent life from years 
of the sowing of wild oats? 

By every possible object lesson God seeks to 
prepare man for the consequences of his evil 
deeds. It was true in all the long centuries before 
Paul wrote it in his letter to his friends in Galatia, 
and it has been an unwavering principle present 
in the experiences of mankind throughout all the 
succeeding years. 

The critical events of the last five years are an 
added attestation. "It is a long lane which does 
not have any turning." The military program of 
an arrogant autocracy has been marked by crim- 
inal conquest ever since the Hohenzollern dynasty 
was established in the swamps of Prussia four 
centuries ago. Except for the rebuke with which 
Napoleon for a time retarded the progress of 
those European highwaymen, the haughty mon- 
ster, with a mania for territorial aggrandizement 
and world domination, has increased in power, 
wealth, pride, and defiance. But the lane found 
its long-delayed turning on the eleventh day of 



TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 31 

the eleventh month of the year of our Lord 1918 
— and "God is not mocked." 

The word "retribution" is not in the Bible, but 
the familiar word "punishment" is often found. 
Again and again we are told that "the wages of 
sin is death," and that "the wicked shall be turned 
into hell and all the nations that forget God." 
Again and again God says, "I will punish," and 
Jesus even said of those who would not treat their 
fellows with consideration and kindness that they 
should go away into "everlasting punishment." 

The ancients in their mythology deified Nemesis 
as a goddess of divine retribution. And every- 
where in ancient, mediaeval, and modern times 
retribution is written upon the records of those 
who attempted to mock God and sought to de- 
ceive him; and soon discovered that "they that 
sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." 

"Retribution" is not a beautiful word, but it 
should not be omitted from our familiar vo- 
cabulary. The recent years have written a new 
and tragic meaning into it. 

It is now quite reliably authenticated that the 
easy overthrow of Russia by Germany can be 
attributed to the clandestine cooperation of the 
Czarina, who was a German princess, a cousin of 
the Kaiser, and a partisan of the Central Powers. 
There seems to have been continual communica- 
tion between the Russian court and the German 
military command, and there is conclusive evi- 
dence that the Russian people were betrayed into 



32 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the hands of the enemy by the members of the 
royal household. Through her conspiracies and 
treacheries the Czarina effected the ruin of Russia, 
her adopted country, and the defeat of the armies 
and the collapse of the entire political structure. 
But how quickly did dire disaster and retribu- 
tion come! Soon her entire family was driven 
into distress and exile, the husband and son 
killed. 

The whole story is most pitiful and startling, 
and is a classic instance of swift retribution. 

Never was a more palpable and heinous crime 
committed against another nation and against 
civilization than when the unconscionable Bis- 
marck forged a telegram in order to furnish a pre- 
text for a war against France back in 1870. There 
were exhaustless mineral stores in the provinces 
of France which bounded Germany on the west, 
toward which she had looked enviously for years, 
and the iron and coal there found in abundance 
would be needed by the predatory Prussians, as 
they were already planning world domination, 
and "the man of blood and iron" was determined 
to possess them. Germany had no lofty ideal for 
which to fight. She built up her military machine 
to a point which made the French army despicable, 
and the Franco-Prussian war was nothing but a 
villainous holdup. Among all the crimes to the 
credit of the Hohenzollerns none surpassed the 
cold-blooded intent which resulted in the easy 
conquest of Napoleon III and the surrender of 



TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 33 

France at Sedan September 1, more than forty 
years ago. Out of that ignoble victory Bismarck 
was able to consolidate all of the smaller states 
into a formidable organization, and the king of 
Prussia, William I, became the emperor of the 
new German empire. 

It was a colossal wrong; and France, proud and 
noble, suffered the greatest humiliation in her 
history. Marshal MacMahon's defense was val- 
iant and brilliant, but he was compelled after a 
bitter fight, which cost the Germans a big price 
in dead and wounded, to surrender more than 
eighty thousand heroic French troops; and, beside 
all the cruel devastations of war, Germany seized 
Alsace and Lorraine and compelled France to 
pay an indemnity of two billions of dollars; and 
the Prussians added to their infamous record of 
robbery and murder. 

France never forgot nor forgave this crime 
against her dignity and her liberties, and an ad- 
vancing civilization never forgave nor forgot it. 
But the Prussians, knowing that Germany needed 
another large indemnity to prosecute wars of ag- 
gression, determined that the first day of August, 
1914, was the time to put Bismarck's declaration 
into demonstration, and went forth to "bleed 
France white." 

But France was better prepared this time for 
the Berlin bandits; and France had many friends; 
and France was ready to fight for her homes and 
her sacred altars; and France was reenforced and 



34 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

inspired by righteous ideals; and France had the 
word of God; and France believed in the inexorable 
law of retribution administered by a righteous 
God; and so once again, after four years of the 
bloodiest war of the ages, the armies of France 
met the German bandits at Sedan — yea, at Sedan. 
Never has there been a more forceful application 
of the law of retribution which follows the steps 
of the sinner against God and humanity than that 
these belligerent nations should meet once again 
at Sedan. It was a pity that the Iron Duke 
could not have been there to feel the scorpion 
lashes of his own fatal Nemesis, but another man 
was there who in his early youth had been un- 
speakably humbled at the first battle of Sedan. 
One man was there who in his ardent young 
manhood felt the sting and dishonor of defeat 
and surrender, and for nearly fifty years has 
believed that God's laws of justice would some 
day be vindicated — yes, he was there — General 
Foch was there, guiding with unerring purpose 
and masterful strategy. The divine law of retri- 
bution was operating there also, and the second 
Sedan wiped out the infamy of the first Sedan, 
and not only visited upon Germany ignominious 
defeat and disaster, but a righteous God then and 
there gave the Potsdam highwaymen their death- 
blow and sent the Hohenzollern dynasty reeling 
into shameful discard. Yes, it is a long lane 
which has no turning. Every infraction of law 
and every offense against God and humanity has 



TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 35 

to be atoned for and made right. The reaping 
follows the sowing — "God is not mocked." 

The law of retribution is founded as much in 
infinite love as in infinite justice. If there were no 
penalties attached to wrongdoing, soon the evil- 
doers would fill the whole earth, and the world 
would become the abode of degenerates and 
devils. But God administers a law which also 
places a holy premium on purity, and meekness, 
and justice, and love. God's code of morals con- 
tains the straightforward announcement: "Evil- 
doers shall be cut off. . . . For yet a little while, 
and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt 
diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. 
But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall 
delight themselves in the abundance of peace." 

The Holy Scriptures are very familiar with the 
beautiful words "recompense" and "reward," for 
just as misfortune inevitably results from the 
sowing of wild oats and wicked deeds, so do the 
fine fruitions of fife come from the faithful sowing 
of good seed. It is a comfort to know that there 
is a benign law, which is beneficently inexorable 
in its fulfillment, that if a man sows good seed, 
he will not find a harvest of tares. The prizes of 
life come to those who have patiently planted the 
good seed. 

It is a continuous mystery and miracle how a 
tiny seed placed in the ground will come forth 
later as a flower, or a fruit, or a tree. How bound- 
lessly resourceful was the mighty Creator who 



36 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

could endow a handful of homely dirt and deposit 
a microscopic secret in an unseemly grain of 
wheat or corn, and, each responding to the other, 
produce a food for man which could be mys- 
teriously transmuted into intellect, and will, and 
love — all of this because like produces like. 

That is a quaint Bible phrase "the recompense 
of reward," and nowhere is it so expressive and 
impressive as when the writer of the Hebrews 
says of Moses that he "refused to be called the 
son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God, than to 
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming 
the reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
treasures of Egypt; for he had respect unto the 
recompense of reward." 

Moses chose to sow the good seed of fidelity 
to his God rather than to sow the seed of "the 
pleasures of sin for a season," for he knew what 
the harvest would be. the game of life is too 
soon over to make a crucial blunder in the spring- 
time of life when the seed is sown. 

All of us have lived long enough to see 
what bitter apples of Sodom are gathered from 
bad seed. We have likewise lived long enough 
to see how those useful people live to a venerable 
and happy old age who honor the law of the good 
seed and the law of inevitable growth. There is 
more good seed in the world than bad — the har- 
vests of recompense and reward are greater than 
the harvests of punishment and retribution. Evil- 



TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 37 

doers are soon cut off, and their names and 
places are hard to find, but the meek shall inherit 
the earth. 

An impending hour of retribution awaits any 
man and any set of men who attempt to fight 
against God, and who endeavor to reverse the 
verdicts of history and justice. There are right- 
eous judgments that must in the end prevail. 
Forty-eight years ago, when the German empire 
was organized, Bismarck, the champion of the 
doctrine of might, was a rank materialist. The 
professors who were suborned by the government 
boldly announced that Germany would present a 
new religion to the world, and that Christianity, 
weak and sentimental, with its devotion to the 
doctrines of right and brotherly love, must be 
destroyed. 

It is a pretty big undertaking for a little man to 
try to blow out the light of the sun, or to dig a hole 
in which to bury Mont Blanc, or to stop a Niagara 
with the palm of his hand, or to bale out an ocean 
with his tin dipper; but any of these was a more 
possible undertaking than that a group of arro- 
gant materialists could stop the progress of truth 
and righteousness. There are some things that 
are as fundamental as is gravity to nature, but 
nothing more so than is the reach of the human 
soul after God — the filial love of the human soul 
for the infinite heavenly Father. Atheism is the 
absurdest thing in the universe, and it is utterly 
repugnant and foreign to a normal soul. The arch 



38 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

prophet of the Bismarckian era of rationalism was 
Frederick Nietzsche, who went crazy trying to 
press God out of his universe. All his writings 
are like the rantings of an erratic brain in a mad- 
house. There is not a scintilla of the spiritual in all 
the utterances of his philosophy. 

I have forgotten which one of the ancient 
philosophers it was who said that there- was never 
a city founded without faith in God. It was the 
fantastic vanity of the Potsdam premier that with 
the well-organized shock troops of Prussianism it 
would be easy to drive the Almighty from his 
throne and give the scepter to some Hohenzollern 
highwayman. 

The German empire was the shortest-lived em- 
pire in all the history of the carnal ambitions of 
man. The Berlin bandits could steal provinces 
from Denmark and France, and could subjugate 
an emasculated Austria, but right and truth rule 
conjointly over an imperishable Kingdom, and 
it took just forty-eight short but tragic years 
to utterly stultify the purposes of Prussianism 
and invalidate the haughty presumption of Kaiser- 
ism: "I have the right to do what I have the 
might to do." 

Bismarck failed — he was doomed to fail. Icarus 
could not explore the sun because his wings were 
of wax. Bismarck could not overthrow the right 
because might has no poisoned arrows that will 
reach up to the habitations of God. The Ger- 
mans have always been poor psychologists. Ar- 



TIME A JUST RETRIBUTOR 39 

mies, and navies, and intrigue, and duplicity are 
strong, but spiritual things are invincible. 

By all the laws of might and excess of power 
Prussianism ought to have succeeded, but Bis- 
marck, and Von Moltke, and Kaiser Wilhelm did 
not reckon on God. With "Gott mit uns" on 
their belt buckles and the devil of devils in their 
hearts they quickly collapsed when they met 
the hosts of the true God on the banks of the 
sacred Marne; and, to-day, the awful nightmare 
is ended, and "Ichabod" is written across the 
palaces of Junkerism, for all glory is departed 
from a perfidious Prussianism, which, having been 
weighed in the balances, was found wanting. 

Yesterday the Kaiser was surrounded by opu- 
lence and power, with all of middle Europe in 
his grasp and with dreams of world domination; 
the most imposing military figure on the globe, 
with courtiers and soldiers to do his bidding; 
with his coffers full of gold and with his guns and 
Zeppelins cruelly terrifying Paris and London — 
only yesterday. 

To-day, he is a fugitive. His dynasty, which 
has stood for four hundred years, is in ruins. An 
outraged world, with holy vengeance, is demanding 
his trial. He is an outlaw who must expiate his 
crimes, for justice will not be cheated. 



Ill 

THE NEW MANHOOD 



A fine story is told of a Britisher who found his soul. Dur- 
ing a fierce engagement a German officer had become impaled 
on a savage barbed- wire fence and he was writhing in anguish. 
The guns were doing terrible work, but the suffering man was 
untouched and was crying out in agony. A young British 
officer saw the tragic spectacle, and when he could stand it no 
longer, he leaped over the top, and, in a storm of shrapnel and 
shell, he released the tortured man, and lifting him on his shoul- 
ders, he carried him toward the German trench. Suddenly, in 
response to this supreme act of kindness and heroism, the firing 
ceased, for both sides watched in amazement. It is further 
related that the commander of the German trench came for- 
ward, and, taking an Iron Cross from his own bosom, he pinned 
it on the breast of the brave Britisher. 

The British boy had found his own soul — it was the soul 
of true chivalry — the soul of the Christ — the soul which will 
make the recent war the last war in all the history of civilization. 

"None could tell me where my soul might be, 
I searched for God, but he eluded me. 
\ I sought out my fellow-man 
And found all three." 



CHAPTER m 
THE NEW MANHOOD 

One evening after I had had my supper in the 
Hostess House at Camp Kearny I drew a chair 
up to the crackling log fire and I found myself 
beside a boy in khaki who was intently reading 
a book. I was soon in conversation with him. 
He was reading a well-written essay on Macbeth, 
and I discovered that he had read many of the 
Shakespearean dramas, and was refreshing his 
memory by perusing this discussion of a brilliant 
Shakespearean scholar. I told him that I thought 
Hamlet would be a good study for the young sol- 
diers; that men of action were needed to-day 
like Fortinbras, who won the victory and seized 
the throne; and that Hamlet, the king's son, was 
a pathetic illustration of how men failed to attain 
their purposes, because they never struck at the 
right time, but hesitated and procrastinated until 
they found themselves in ignominious defeat and 
disgrace. He said he would give more attention 
to*Hamlet. 

He then said that before he entered the army 
he was the only support of his mother, and that 
he had been deprived of the best school advan- 
tages, and that he was highly prizing the priv- 
ileges which his leisure in the army was affording 

43 



44 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

him for reading. I found that he had carefully 
read some of Victor Hugo's great works, and was 
a great admirer of the brilliant French writer. 
He could talk about Les Miserables and Jean 
Valjean, of The Man Who Laughs, and of The 
Toilers of the Sea. This young soldier was not 
an exception, but he is typical of many a fine 
young American who found his soul in the war. 

A gentleman who was in the Y. M. C. A. work in 
France says: "I have seen boys come out of battles 
made new men. I have seen them go into the 
line sixteen-year-old lads and come out of the 
trenches men. I saw a lad who had gone through 
the fighting in Belleau Woods. I talked with 
him in the hospital at Paris. His face was terri- 
bly wounded. He was ugly to look at, but when 
I talked with him I found a soul as white as a 
lily and as courageous as granite. 

"I may look awful," he said, "but I'm a new 
man inside. What I saw out there in the woods 
made me different somehow. I saw a friend 
stand by a machine gun with a whole platoon of 
Germans sweeping down on him, and he never 
flinched. He fired that old gun until every 
bullet was gone and his gun was red-hot. I was 
lying on the grass, where I could see it all. I 
saw them bayonet him. He fought to the last 
against fifty men; but, thank God, he died a 
man; he died an American! I lay there and 
cried to see them kill him; but every time I think 
of that fellow it makes me want to be more of 



THE NEW MANHOOD 45 

a man. When I get back home I'm going to 
give up my life to some kind of Christian service. 
I'm going to do it because I saw that man die 
so bravely. If he can die like that, in spite of 
my face I can live like a man." 1 

Again this same writer says: "And so it is 
all over France. As I have worked in some 
twenty hospitals, from the first-aid dressing sta- 
tions back through the evacuation hospitals to 
the base hospitals, I have found that the reaction 
of wounds and suffering is always a spiritual 
reaction, and I know as no other thing that the 
boys of America are to come back, wounded or 
otherwise, a better crowd of men than when they 
went away. They are men reborn." 

The cross and its Christ were everywhere in 
evidence in France. An American soldier recently 
plucked a violet at the foot of a demolished way- 
side cross, and then he wrote: 

"I picked a violet in France, 
Beloved of shade and dew. 
I wish my idle hands had left 
It smiling where it grew 

"Beside a little wayside shrine 
Demolished in the war 
It steadfastly proclaimed its faith 
That God would quite restore 

"Each lovely work of his that man 
In churlish wrath destroyed, 
And that new loveliness would fill 
Each aching, empty void. 

»W. L. Stidger. 



46 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

"It was a little violet; 
I held it in my hand 
And marveled that its withering 
Should make me understand." 1 

German frightfulness destroyed many of the 
crosses, but it thereby even more gloriously en- 
throned the Christ. 

And now comes the beautiful story of a San 
Bernardino boy, who says that one day in France 
he stepped into an old church to get a glimpse 
of its classic beauty when a French officer of the 
army entered, accompanied by a single orderly. 
The officer knelt reverently and remained in 
prayer for full three quarters of an hour. The 
California boy marveled at the intensity of the 
officer's devotion and followed him when he left 
the church, only to learn that it was no other 
than General Foch, the masterful strategist and 
generalissimo of the Allied armies. 

General Ferdinand Foch was born in a little 
town in the Pyrenees, August 4, 1851. As a 
child he was devotional and studious in his habits, 
attending church and likewise school, and later 
he was sent to the Polytechnic School where 
French artillery officers are trained. At twenty- 
three he was a captain of artillery and had al- 
ready acquired considerable reputation as a 
teacher of military tactics, and before many 
years was regarded as one of the foremost author- 
ities in military strategy. In those fatal days of 

1 Victor C. Reese. 



THE NEW MANHOOD 47 

August, 1914, he was the general in charge of the 
Ninth Army Corps. In the early part of Sep- 
tember, when the German hordes were rushing 
on toward Paris, and the French were retreat- 
ing in disorder, when the capital was being moved 
to Bordeaux, and the fall of Paris seemed immi- 
nent, Marshal Joffre, the commander-in-chief of 
the army, determined that the savage Huns 
should be stopped — and he organized his historic 
defense at the Marne. To General Foch, with 
his Ninth Army Corps, was assigned the gigantic 
task of stemmimg the tide of the Prussian's 
fiercest shock troops. Foch was crowded back 
in spite of gallant resistance, until on Septem- 
ber 9 the situation became most desperate, but 
Foch remained serene and confident, and about 
noon on that eventful day, with marvelous Chris- 
tian fortitude, refusing to acknowledge defeat, 
he sent his historic message to General Joffre: 
"My right wing has been driven back; my left 
wing is crushed; I shall attack with my center. 
Situation is excellent." With the help of the 
God of battles that daring attack saved the 
day, and turned the First Battle of the Marne 
from a dismal rout into one of the great decisive 
battles not only of the war but of all history. 

The Prussians discovered forces upon which 
they had not reckoned and fell back, and finally 
broke and fled, and General Foch vindicated the 
teaching of his classroom that "a battle won is 
a battle in which one will not admit oneself van- 



48 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

quished. A battle is lost which one believes to 
be lost, for battles are not lost materially." 

After the battle, when the Bishop of Cahors 
went to congratulate and thank the masterful 
soldier, General Foch reverently replied: "Mon- 
seigneur, do not thank me, but Him to whom 
victory alone belongs!" 

On September 9, General Foch was able to 
turn back the forces of Von Kluck, many of 
whom were swallowed up in the dangerous quick- 
sands of the Saint Gond marshes; and on that 
September day the second diabolical Hun inva- 
sion was rebuked, and the conflict goes down into 
history as the Battle of the Marne. 

It was after this same battle that a French 
general, when asked how it was possible for the 
French army to defeat the overwhelming Hun 
hordes, answered: "Miracle! Miracle! Our line 
of four Frenchmen deep broke through a Ger- 
man line sixteen men deep. Le bon Dieu! Le 
bonDieu!" ("The good God! The good God!") 

Not since Garibaldi's stroke 
Freed his land from the Austrian yoke, 
And Italy after a thousand years 
Walked in beauty among her peers; 
Not since Nelson followed the star 
Of freedom to triumph at Trafalgar 
On the tossing floor of the Western seas; 
No, not since Miltiades 
Fronted the Persian hosts and won 
Against the tyrant at Marathon, 
Has a greater defender of liberty 
Stood and struck for the cause than he, 



THE NEW MANHOOD 49 

Whose right was weakened, whose left was thin, 
Whose center was almost driven in, 
But whose iron courage no fate could crush 
Nor hinder. "I shall advance," said Foch. 1 

A man who was a student in the classes of 
General Foch a dozen years ago in the High War 
School in France, when the noble soldier was 
lecturing on strategy and the conduct of battles, 
says that the chief characteristic of Foch is 
"the strength of his soul." "He believes that 
battles are won because of moral qualities," and 
lost for want of them. "He is a devout man and 
the son of pious parents. His life has been har- 
monious in its calm studiousness, in its freedom 
from intrigue, in its broad and lofty outlook." 
Some time ago he wrote: "I approach the end 
of my life with the conscience of a faithful servant 
who reposes in the peace of the Lord. Faith in 
life eternal, in a God of goodness and compas- 
sion, has sustained me in the most trying hours. 
Prayer has enlightened my way." Foch is a 
man of God, a man of soul, a man of sympathy. 
Neither Joshua nor Gideon was more a fighter 
of God's battles. The greatest words of his mil- 
itary creed are "duty" and "discipline." He 
"has not only the qualities of head and heart 
for command, but the sort of faith that moves 
mountains, however blackly set in the clouds." 2 

One wonders if a willingness to surrender one's 
own life that others may live, and that great 

1 Bliss Carman. s Atlantic Monthly, October, 1918. 



50 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

principles and ideals may not die, is not a short- 
cut to finding one's own soul. 

A soldier boy, who before the war was an in- 
mate of a reformatory, to which he was sent 
because he was an incorrigible truant and so bad 
a boy that his parents had given him up in despair, 
won a Victoria Cross for extraordinary bravery 
in risking his own life to save the lives of his 
comrades in France. There was a radical change 
in the boy; he had actually become a new 
character. 

When General Cadorna was retreating to a 
new and stronger position, his great Italian army 
was saved through the heroic sacrifices of whole 
regiments of Italian troops who defended the 
mountain-top positions until they were entirely 
exterminated. What an epic of true heroism 
was written in those fearful war days! And how 
many men found their souls in the fiery furnaces 
of battle! 

Some years ago a young man emigrated from 
the Thames valley to Canada because he had by 
his misdeeds utterly disgraced his father, who 
was a distinguished physician. His family never 
expected, never wished to hear from him again. 
When the call came to Canada for troops this 
young man joined the first contingent, determined 
to show that he had sincerely repented, and was 
anxious to make good. His regiment was soon 
in the thick of the fight and was the first to be 
exposed to the deadly gas attacks. The young 



THE NEW MANHOOD 51 

man did noble work, and besides defending a 
perilous position, he was able to save the lives 
of several of his comrades; and then was severely 
wounded, but not before he had won his "Dis- 
tinguished Conduct Medal." When he was con- 
valescent he was invalided home for a short 
leave. When he reached his home he was not 
expected, neither did his parents know anything 
of his honor and his bravery, and they were 
completely astonished when he appeared in his 
Canadian khaki uniform with his medal pinned 
upon his coat. The boy had come back — he had 
found his soul, and with great pride his parents 
walked by his side through the streets of the 
town where he had once caused them shame. 

God advances the affairs of the moral world 
by a succession of divine impulses which respon- 
sive men endeavor to fulfill in their lives. Every 
epoch in history turns upon the soul of some 
brave man. Momentum is the mass plus the 
velocity. In the moral universe momentum is the 
man — the mass, plus the God-purpose — the veloc- 
ity. Men who respond to their high calls are 
sustained by this momentum — they become the 
product of that power, and are made strong by 
it. Abraham submitted to it, and became the 
father of the faithful; Moses was enabled "to 
endure as seeing him who is invisible." Paul 
cried out, "What wilt thou have me to do?" and 
developed into the imperial apostle; Luther 
aroused all Europe, and John Wesley claimed 



52 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the world for his parish. The Puritans were 
sustained by this divine force. They sailed from 
Delft Haven one hundred and four in number, 
fifty-eight of whom were graduates of Oxford and 
Cambridge. During their first winter in New 
England fifty died from disease and exposure, 
but when, in the following spring, the Mayflower 
sailed for Europe, not one of those dauntless 
heroes availed himself of the opportunity to 
return. 

"What sought they thus afar? 
Bright jewels of the mine, 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? 
They sought a faith's pure shrine." 

The operation of this law of momentum in 
the spiritual world justifies Tennyson's familiar 
couplet, 

"Yet I doubt not through the ages, one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns." 

We hear much in these days of self-made men. 
John Bright, when he heard that his political 
rival, Disraeli, was making the personal claim 
to be a self-made man, ironically remarked, 
"Yes, he is a self-made man, and he worships 
his creator." But there is a call to-day for faith- 
made men. Men of faith are men of fiber. Said 
Whittier, "When faith is lost the man is dead." 
Men with faith in self, in their fellows, in their 
God. Faith in self makes a man humble; faith 



THE NEW MANHOOD 53 

in his fellows makes him sympathetic; faith in 
God makes him a martyr. Wordsworth sings 

"Of one in whom persuasion and belief 
Had ripened into faith, and faith became 
A passionate intuition." 

Faith-made men are men of obedience and 
courage. Courage is a moral quality, as is ob- 
served in its Latin derivation. Courage to push 
and be a man, and not wait for a pull and be a 
manikin. Courage to give as well as to get; 
to get in order to give. Courage to give up. 

Faith-made men are God's prompt messengers. 
Men who step out into the dark, over a brink if 
it is necessary, and trust Almighty God to supply 
a landing place for their feet. Such faith-made 
men were Francis of Assisi, bearing about in his 
body the marks of his Lord's sufferings; Gari- 
baldi shouting to the patriots of Italy, "I will 
return, I will return!" Benito Juarez, the little 
Indian, the liberator of Mexico; and John Brown, 
who replied to the messenger, "Tell the General 
when he wants me to fight, to say so; no other 
command shall I obey." If the dome of John 
Brown's intellect had been as lofty as his heart 
was deep, there would have been a prompter 
issue of the principles which he espoused; he was 
the John the Baptist of freedom. Wendell Phil- 
lips heard the voice of God in the loving command 
of his wife, "You must take up the cause of the 
slave." Such a faith-made woman was Harriet 



54 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Beecher Stowe, who persistently declared con- 
cerning her epoch-making book, "God wrote it." 

And such a faith-made man was Ulysses S. 
Grant, with his shibboleth of "unconditional 
surrender," hurrying with the speed and bril- 
liancy of a comet from the victories of Vicksburg 
to the surrender of Appomattox. What shall 
be said of William McKinley, who, when the 
final decision was to be made concerning the 
Philippines, which had suddenly fallen into the 
lap of this republic, said: "I walked the floor of 
the White House night after night until mid- 
night, and then went down on my knees and 
asked God for light and guidance; and it came 
to me that there was nothing left for us to do 
but to take the Islands, educate the Filipinos, 
and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, 
and, by God's grace, do the best we could for 
them." 

There was a boy in the Naval Reserve who 
was a stoker on a ship, and the boy's father is 
at the head of one of the large bookstores in 
New York city. The boy was anxious to go into 
the army, but his eyes were bad, and so he en- 
listed as a stoker, where good eyes were not needed. 
And there he served his country in the hold of 
a ship with no chance to fight back, but doing 
his part to keep the ship moving; "with none to 
see what is going on, and with every chance of 
being drowned like a rat if the ship goes down." 
He heard the call of God and duty. 



THE NEW MANHOOD 55 

It was said by John Milton long since that 
"Great souls are the white sheaves that this 
world should wave back to the God of summer." 

On a recent Sunday night after the church 
service a soldier in khaki came forward to the 
chancel. In my question box I had attempted 
to answer the question "Which is the finest line 
in the English language?" and this soldier said 
to me, "What do you think of this as among 
the best things that have been written?" — and 
he quoted those rarely beautiful lines from 
Tennyson's Locksley Hall, 

"Love took up the harp of life, 

And smote on all the chords with might, 
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, 
Passed in music out of sight." 

And I replied, "That is magnificent — most 
beautiful. I ought to have quoted it as my 
personal choice"; and there was a rare glow in 
the eyes of that fine young officer as if in the 
experiences of war he had already lost self out 
of his own growing soul. 

Men are looking to God in these moments of 
world crisis as never before; and it was not by 
any means an accident that a man trained in a 
Christian home should be at the head of the 
American forces in France; and that a son of 
the manse should be the commander-in-chief of 
the army and the honored President of the United 
States; and that General Foch should be a devout 



56 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Christian; and that Sir Douglas Haig should be 
a man of unusual piety. Of General Haig it is 
said that he never omitted attending divine service 
at the front, and is like the lamented Gladstone 
in his study of theology, reading the French and 
German as readily as he does the English. Dur- 
ing the darkest hours of the German drive, at 
the close of a chaplain's service on Sunday morn- 
ing, General Haig went forward and said to the 
minister, "Remember, the battle is not ours 
but God's." 

During one of the battles in France a soldier 
was found entangled in a German barbed-wire, 
and when his comrades attempted to carry him, 
after they had released him from his position of 
jeopardy, it seemed that they would almost 
pull him to pieces. He begged his rescuers to 
put him out of misery, but Sergeant Rose threw 
himself on the ground and made a human sledge 
out of himself, and insisted that they should 
lay the wounded man upon him — which was done. 
They dragged these two men back over two 
hundred yards of No Man's Land, through the 
broken wire and over ground that was strewn 
with broken shells. 

They were all so anxious to get the wounded 
man to a place of safety and treatment that 
they forgot the man underneath. When they 
reached the trenches they found that the brave 
sergeant was nearly as badly off as his burden. 
His hands and face and body were painfully 



THE NEW MANHOOD 57 

torn, and he had suffered frightfully, but never 
once had he said, "Go slow," or "Wait a bit." 
As the late Captain Hugh Knyvett, the Anzac 
scout, says, "Such is the stuff our men are made 
of." 

In the Methodist history of Central Ohio there 
is a chapter which reads as if it might have been 
taken bodily from the Acts of the Apostles. There 
came to the town of Zanesville from then faraway 
New England, a young man of fine presence and 
excellent ability, who said that he was a min- 
ister of the gospel. He was cordially received by 
the people and made a remarkable stir as he was 
invited to preach in the pulpits. But after a 
few months he brought disgrace upon the churches 
because of his association with the drinking and 
dissipated men of the place, and it was then 
learned that he had perpetrated what he declared 
was a practical joke on the church people, for he 
was not only not a Christian, but in the place 
from which he came he had been a wild and 
reckless young man and a ringleader among the 
roughs about the town. 

When the true character of the young man 
was discovered he was of course ostracized by 
those who had been the victims of his clever 
but unprincipled imposition, and he became 
very bitter against the church. He began the 
practice of law, and soon became recognized as 
one of the most brilliant men at the bar of Mus- 
kingum County. Later he married a beautiful 



58 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

young woman, but his antipathy for the church 
increased with his prosperity, until, at length a 
baby came to his home, and the spirit of the 
man was softened and sweetened as people 
noticed his tender devotion to the baby and her 
mother. But one day, just as the baby was learn- 
ing to toddle out to meet him and call him 
"Daddy," it sickened and died. The father's 
heart was broken, and his life suddenly changed. 
He publicly confessed his sins and begged the 
forgiveness of the people of ' Zanesville, and be- 
came a zealous member of the church. Later he 
was received into the ministry of the Methodist 
Church, and at the General Conference of 1844 he 
was elected a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. He made a large place for himself in the 
activities of the church, as a versatile writer and bril- 
liant preacher and administrator, and was noted 
for his holy and winsome character. He suffered 
great bodily infirmities during the last years of 
his life, and as he bade a final farewell to the 
things and friends of earth, he exultingly cried, 
"0 wondrous, wondrous, wondrous love!" and 
Bishop Leonidas L. Hamline went up to God. 

A new creature. A new creature in Christ 
Jesus! Old things had passed away — truly all 
things had become new! 

That is the New Manhood. 



IV 
THE NEW DUTY 



A man cannot choose his duties. — George Eliot. 



The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in 
what is remote; the work of duty lies in what is easy, and men 
seek for it in what is difficult — Mencius. 

Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and 
goes to rest with us at night. It is coextensive with the action 
of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go 
where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the 
light of life. — Gladstone. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE NEW DUTY 

In the New Day is there anything more val- 
uable than life? So problematical, and versatile, 
and profound, and simple, and adventurous, and 
full of surprises is life — human life — that in our 
thinking we come back to it if perchance we shall 
be able to find out some of its many secrets and 
solve some of its mysteries. 

If we seek from others a definition of life, we 
are more in the labyrinth than when we began, 
for one will say that fife is a battle, another that 
it is a bubble; one that it is a jest, another that 
it is a cheat; one that it is a short summer, another 
that it is like a winter's day; one that it is but 
a span, another that it is only a walking shadow; 
one that it is best when it is ended, another 
when it is begun; one that it is a prickly thorn, 
another that it is a summer rose; one that it is 
sweet, another that it is bitter; one that it is a 
horrid grind, another that it is a highway for 
angels; one that it is a lie, another that it is love. 

Life is so soon over that it is a tragic pity to 
miss the path. There are so many new endeavors 
to enjoy; there is so much of divinity to be re- 
vealed; there is so much of humanity to be loved 
and served; there are so many thought realms to 

61 



62 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

be entered; so many alluring enchantments; so 
many holy friendships; so many big tasks to 
awaken our zeal and tax our humble talents. 
But it is so soon over! If we would find out its 
fascinating secret, we must be about it. It is 
not something we choose, or desire, or discover; 
it is a gift, a gift of God. We are the custodians 
of this supernal thing called life; it is divine, 
for the soul is God's image. Human life is so 
soon over; and if we dally in primrose paths, it 
will be too late when we find again the way of 
life. Yes, it is a gift. Next to his only begotten 
Son, our Redeemer, it is God's greatest gift to 
the world. So profound is the secret of the 
origin of life that all the wise men in all of their 
laboratories have not been able to produce by 
experimentation even the lowest forms of life. 
It is a gift direct from the hand of the Infinite. 

Is anything more valuable than life? "He 
that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 
However strange this paradox may be, we get 
by giving, we find by losing, and we win by sur- 
render. The best and most triumphant thing 
which we can do with our lives is often to sur- 
render them. Life is not measured by the shadow 
on the dial, but by heart throbs; not by days, 
but by deeds. The youth Nathan Hale still 
lives into the third century one of the best- 
known young men in American history because as a 
boy in his twenties he regretted he had but one 
life to give for his country — and he gave it. 



THE NEW DUTY 63 

Life is worth only what it will purchase in 
the open market of achievement and victory. 
Those fifty sailor boys who went down with the 
sinking of the Maine in Cuban waters have 
multiplied their influence infinitely beyond what 
they could have accomplished if they had pre- 
ferred quiet lives in quiet places and had reached 
even honorable old age. ' 'Remember the Alamo!" 
"Remember the Maine!" have aroused the pa- 
triotism of the years; and one day when a das- 
tardly submarine sent sixty-seven of our soldier 
boys to the bottom of the Atlantic, another 
tocsin was added which rallied the hosts of Amer- 
ican youth and swept Junkerism into shameless 
oblivion, "Remember the Antilles!" "Remember 
the Antilles!" 

We hear brave Colonel Travis saying once more 
at the Alamo, "I will never retreat or surrender. 
Take good care of my motherless boy; if I five, 
I will love him and protect him, but if I die he 
will have the honor of knowing that his father 
laid down his life for his country." 

Yes, there are many things more valuable than 
life. 

Truth is more valuable than life. Every great 
truth which we possess to-day somebody died 
for it. There is not a discovery in science, and 
not a continent or an island, and not a beautiful 
shore richly embroidered with civilization's best 
gifts, for which men have not suffered and died. 
Some of us never can understand the pioneer — 



64 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the pathfinder, who goes before and opens up 
the way. Why should any man take his life in 
his hand and travel afar, exposed to wild beasts, 
and wild streams, and wild men, and wild storms? 
Every pathway of progress has been paved with 
the bleached bones of those who did not arrive. 
In the early days the graves of the fallen marked 
the trail of those who journeyed westward over 
the desert waste and the mountains of rock; but 
graves have always been milestones in the progress 
of truth. Those who die for the truth have won 
the greatest victories. In the sacrament of blood 
truth has been made immortal. The martyrs are 
the makers of history. But some of us can never 
understand the martyr. Why should a man die 
for a truth which he shall never himself enjoy? 
Why should a man plant a tree under whose shade 
he shall never recline? I will tell you. When, 
even a humble man comes into the fullness of 
his life he understands that, obscure though he 
may be, he is responsible to God and man for 
his life. It is not egotism which makes a humble 
man feel that he must do his part and fill his 
place just as if he were great among the great- 
est. He is impelled by holy impulses of honor 
and conviction and courage. 

If he be noble, the nobleness that is within him 
resents the soft impeachment that he is inverte- 
brate and cowardly. Personality is the effort of 
the individual to hold his own place in the throngs 
of men about him. It is the individual who 



THE NEW DUTY 65 

counts. There can be no solidarity in society 
unless we reckon with the multitudes as indi- 
viduals. 

"A people is but the attempt of many 
To rise to the complete life of one; 
And those who live as models for the mass 
Are singly of more value than they all." 1 

Christ came to honor personality. His greatest 
utterances were to individuals. It was to Nico- 
demus that he said, "Ye must be born again," 
and to the woman at the well that he said "God 
is a Spirit: and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth," and to Peter, 
"I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not," 
and to Saul of Tarsus, "It is hard for thee to 
kick against the pricks." It is the single man 
standing firmly by the truth that is of "more 
value than they all." 

Our convictions are of more value than our 
life. The bird is of more value than the cage. 
The gold is of more value than the quartz. The 
jewel is of more value than its setting. The music 
is more valuable than the instrument. The 
thought is more valuable than the brain. Our 
convictions are so involved in our character 
that if a man is not true to his convictions he 
betrays his own character; and he is the most 
despicable of Judases who is a traitor to himself. 
They who are not true to their convictions of 



1 Robert Browning. 



66 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

right are abettors of the wrong — conspirators 
against the truth. 

If a man is not taller from his shoulders up 
than from his shoulders down he belongs not 
to the race of men, but to the age of the ptero- 
dactyls. The difference between animals and men 
is in the size of their heads and amplitude of 
their brains. 

The right is more valuable than life. There 
would be no life if there were no right. When 
the right is gone men would soon devour and 
destroy each other. "Might is right," "Force 
is right," "War is beautiful," "Weakness is a 
crime," "Hate your enemies"; were all the wicked 
lies of Prussianism. If there were none to stand 
up for the immortal truths that "Right is might," 
and "The strong ought bear the infirmities of 
the weak," and "Love your enemies," and "The 
meek shall inherit the earth," the world would 
soon revert to the jungle, because the law of 
force is the law of the jungle, and the earth 
would ere long be the habitation of human brutes 
who would soon tear each other to shreds, and 
human life would become extinct. 

I love the man who foresees the final triumph 
of the right and believes that we are not fighting 
a losing battle; that Christ will reign until he 
shall have put all enemies under his feet; and I 
am sorry for those people who keep their eyes 
always on the ground and judge of the big world 
by the narrow boundaries of the little circle of 



THE NEW DUTY 67 

their ground view. Horizon! God's in his 
heaven, all must come right with the world. 
We should cease wailing about the world getting 
worse and rejoice in the triumphs of the past 
and of the mightier conquests of the future. If 
the world is getting worse, it is a stultification 
of the spirit of the gospel and a denial of the 
promises of Christ. 

I love the man who has faith enough to sing 
with Browning: 

"There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as 
before; 
The evil is null, is nought but silence implying sound." 

"It's wiser being good than bad, 

It's safer being meek than fierce, 
It's fitter being sane than mad, 

My own hope is a sun that will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 

That after Last returns the First, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched; 

That what began best can't end worst, 

Nor what God blessed once prove accurst." 1 

Let the tongues of the prophets of despair be 
dumb. Let the singer of the morning fill the 
world with cheerful melodies. So long as men 
will fight for the right the right will prevail. 
Character is the foundation of conviction. When 
we bring up our boys in the principles of truth 
as the testing time comes we cannot keep them 
out of the battle of righteousness. 

These boys of ours heard the call of patriotism 

1 Robert Browning. 



68 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

and religion, and because they have been trained 
in manliness they answered, "Here!" Patriotism 
is more valuable than life. What is life worth 
to a citizen if he lives and his country fails? 

Our Puritan fathers and mothers — right, con- 
viction, character were more valuable to them 
than life. The best we have in our land to-day 
we have received from them. 

It was a bleak December morning that the 
Mayflower dropped its anchor in the icy waters 
of Plymouth harbor. They must effect a hasty 
landing, for there is much sickness on the little 
ship. "Famine has clambered up over the side 
of the ship, and holds the tiller, and death paces 
back and forth as if in command. " The men 
reach the shore, but "all that dreary December 
day, while it snowed and sleeted and froze and 
blew, they prayed and sang and walked back 
and forth to keep warm, wearing a path through 
the deep snow, not stopping so much as to build 
a fire until six o'clock at night, for it is God's 
holy Sabbath day. They can die if need be, 
but they cannot violate God's holy ordinance." 1 

Duty is more valuable than life. There is a 
word sweeter than "duty," but none that is 
stronger. "Duty" is the most stalwart word in 
our vocabulary. The dynamo packed away in 
the word "duty" is "ought"; and a scholar says 
that the word "ought" is a contraction of the 
sterling phrase, "We owe it." The best meaning 

i Bishop C. H. Fowler. 



THE NEW DUTY 69 

then of duty is "We owe it." Duty means obli- 
gation, and the more a man is a man the more 
is he determined to pay his debts. Duty is dis- 
charging our obligation to those who have pre- 
ceded us, that we may be a blessing to those who 
shall follow us. A clever woman wrote: 

"I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty; 

I awoke and found that life was Duty, 
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? 

Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly, 
And thou shalt find thy dream to be 

A truth and noonday light to thee." 1 

Duty gives the momentum that arrives. Eng- 
land expected every man to do his duty at Trafal- 
gar Cape. America expects every citizen to do 
his duty anywhere, and God places duty before 
every person as a condition of character, achieve- 
ment, and heaven. Moses and Paul responded 
to the call of duty and are the greatest names 
in all history. Daniel and Joseph did their duty, 
and through pits and prisons and lions' dens 
ascended to powerful premierships. Samson and 
Absalom lost the path of duty and reached the 
disgrace of ignominious defeat and the prison 
house in Gaza. Enoch and Elijah did their duty 
and were not found after they had walked and 
fought for God, because God took them. Mary 
the Virgin mother and Mary the sister of Laz- 
arus did their duty, and the mother is the most 
exquisitely honored woman in the world, and the 

i Ellen S. Hooper. 



70 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

fame of the sister is spread wherever the gospel 
is preached. Stephen did his duty and went to 
glorious martyrdom; and the beloved John did 
his duty and in blissful old age beheld the radiant 
revelations of Patmos. Judas failed of his duty 
and hurried himself into the ignominy of the 
suicide. 

John Huss did his duty and was rewarded with 
victorious death. Martin Luther did his duty 
a hundred and thirty years later and was rewarded 
with victorious life. John Wesley did his duty, 
and, crowded out of the church where he had 
been his father's curate, he claimed the world 
as his parish. Savonarola did his duty, and he 
made the De' Medici tremble on their tottering 
thrones and rebuked wickedness in high places, 
and hastened the millennium by thousands of 
years. Of course they burned him at the stake 
after he had first been strangled by Pope Alex- 
ander VI. After his martyrdom the people 
kissed the very stones in the plaza where he had 
been burned, and the authorities ordered the 
erection of a massive marble fountain to conceal 
the spot, but the people on the anniversary day 
of his death bank the plaza high with beautiful 
flowers in memory of the bravest servant of 
Christ who has lived in modern times. "Duty" 
was his magic word. Savonarola Girolamo! 
Duty! Duty! 

Abraham Lincoln, in immortal words familiar 
to all, said: "Let us have faith that right makes 



THE NEW DUTY 71 

might, and in that faith let us to the end dare 
to do our duty as we understand it." 

Robert E. Lee, in an affectionate letter to his 
son, cited the circumstances in the State of 
Connecticut, when on that historic Dark Day a 
timid legislator arose, and expressing the fear 
that the Day of Judgment was at hand, suggested 
an adjournment. Whereupon that fine old stal- 
wart, Davenport, promptly declared, that if it 
were the Day of Judgment approaching, he wished 
to be found at his post of duty; and moved that 
the candles be brought in. General Lee wrote, 
"My son, 'duty' is the sublimest word in our 
language. Do your duty at all times like the 
old Puritan. You can do no more; you should 
not wish to do less." 

We have just passed the one hundred and 
thirteenth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. 
It was at that epochal contest that Admiral 
Horatio Nelson shouted to his men, "England 
expects every man to do his duty!" He was 
mortally wounded in that fierce engagement, and 
the last words of the dying commander were, 
"Thank God, I have done my duty!" 

At the famous battle of Allatoona, General 
Corse was in command of the fortifications. 
General Sherman signaled to him, "Hold the 
fort, for I am coming!" Somebody asked Sherman 
if Corse would do it. Whereupon "Uncle Billie" 
replied: "He will hold out. I know the man!" 
and General Corse did hold out, though a cruel 



72 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

ball carried away his right ear and his cheek bone. 

The path of duty is always the path of glory 
and of God. The man who is about his duty 
is too busy to be afraid of God or man, of good 
or evil, of life or death. it is tremendous to 
feel the throb and thrill of impelling, compulsory 
duty. Duty is perspective. Duty is initiative. 
Duty is destination. Duty is divinity. Duty is 
partnership with God. 

Duty is more valuable than life. 

The word that is sweeter than "duty," and 
equally as strong, is "love" — and love is more 
valuable than life. Love is God; God is love. 
Every giant soul who reaches altitudes of godli- 
ness is a man of love. Savonarola, with all of 
his leonine strength and his vigorous assaults 
upon evil, was a lovable man. Luther was a 
lovable man. Wesley was a lovable man. Might 
of mind and conviction and arm are not incon- 
sistent with tender affection. Wellington and 
Grant and Sherman and Lee and Stonewall 
Jackson were lovable men, and so are Pershing 
and Foch. 

Abraham Lincoln, the most-abused and best- 
loved man in American history, the strongest 
man in courage and personality which our age 
has produced, was so lovable a man that his 
neighbors forgot his last name and called him 
"Abe" — "Honest Abe." So tender was his heart 
of love that he nearly demoralized the discipline 
in the army by pardoning many of the offenders. 



THE NEW DUTY 73 

We have not forgotten how one evening he urged 
his friend Joshua Speed to stay all night with 
him, saying, "This is Thursday night, and to- 
morrow is execution day in the army, and I 
never sleep any on Thursday night." There is 
some criticism of George Gray Bernard's statue 
of Lincoln which has been dedicated in Cin- 
cinnati, and a replica of which is to be placed 
beside that of Cromwell in England. But Lincoln 
is the despair of the sculptor as he is of the painter 
and poet. So marvelous was the divinity of 
this unique man that neither marble, nor canvas, 
nor eloquence, nor all of these combined can give 
to the world the true Lincoln; but love can make 
the real Lincoln live in each succeeding genera- 
tion; and as men love more and the brotherhood 
becomes more and more real, Lincoln will be better 
understood. If we would know the height and 
beauty of a mountain, we must have a long 
perspective and a lofty point of view. And so 
as men ascend into nobler manliness they will 
know better this manliest of men. 

Mary's alabaster box was prompted by love, 
though it was filled with fragrant ointment. 
The world is waiting to-day for alabaster boxes 
of love whose perfume shall fill the whole earth. 

Love is the attribute of Deity, for God is love. 
To the extent that we have love, we possess the 
divine nature. Love is the mainspring of civiliza- 
tion. Love beats swords into plowshares and 
spears into pruning hooks. Civilization is the 



74 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

increase of brotherhood. Love establishes the 
parliament of man; it is the fulfillment of the law. 
Love is strength; it is a token of refinement. 
Cruelty, selfishness, and bestiality go out when 
love comes in. 

I think perhaps the most pitiful line in all 
English literature is found in the diary of Carlyle. 
He was often harsh in his disposition and was 
too busy to be thoughtful. He was not a misan- 
thrope, but he was a sort of literary surgeon who 
saw the deformities of the society of the day 
in which he lived, and his pen was usually a sharp 
scalpel with which he was busy performing 
operations with the hope of improving the con- 
dition of the patient. After his wife's death he 
wrote: "0 if I could but see her once more, were 
it but for five minutes, to let her know that I 
always loved her through it all! She never did 
know it — never." Jane Carlyle was a brilliant 
and beautiful woman, and the bitterness of her 
disposition would probably never have gained 
the ascendency if her husband's alabaster boxes 
had been freely broken for her. 

Once I saw an alabaster box from which the 
fragrant ointment had been poured. It was in 
an exposition in London. It was nothing but a 
rude row boat, strong and sturdy to be sure, 
but no delicate marble vase was ever more ex- 
quisite in the noble service which it rendered. 
Early one morning as a wild storm rocked Britain's 
granite-bound shore a slip of a girl saw a wreck on 



THE NEW DUTY 75 

the rocks of a distant island and heard the cries 
for help; but no lifeboat could live in such a 
furious sea. The girl aroused her aged father, 
but he said it was no use; it would be certain 
death. The brave girl leaped into the lighthouse 
boat and said she would go alone. The impossible 
had no fears or intimidation for her; and her 
father was stimulated by her invincible purpose 
and accompanied her; and nine precious lives 
were saved that eventful September day. Grace 
Darling, though in frail health, broke her ala- 
baster box and won an imperishable place in the 
annals of the world's deeds of heroism. 

There was an alabaster box all shattered to 
pieces in the suburbs of Los Angeles not long ago. 
The tower watchman was at his place at the 
levers. He saw a wild car coming like a mad 
demon along the rails, and a trolley filled with 
people was about to cross the tracks. The un- 
controlled car must be derailed at all hazards, 
but if this were done the momentum with which 
it was coming would cause it to leap from the 
tracks and the tower-house would be directly in 
its angry path. But the brave fellow in the tower 
never hesitated an instant. He threw the 
switch. There was a terrible crash. The tower- 
house was demolished, and they picked the man 
up forty feet away badly bruised but not seriously 
injured. Men of noble ideals and unselfish mo- 
tives and fidelity to their trusts can be depended 
upon not to forsake their posts of duty in the 



76 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

moment of unexpected responsibility. Character 
will not flinch in the testing time. The splintered 
tower-house, though not so dainty as broken 
marble, was equally a sacred alabaster box of 
loving ministry. 

Some years ago in Brooklyn it was necessary 
for a woman to leave her baby fast asleep in the 
cradle in the tenement house while she went 
around the corner to the grocery store. On her 
way home there was an alarm of fire and in a 
moment she found that the blaze was in the house 
in which she lived. She threw her basket away 
and with breathless haste ran toward her home 
crying for her baby. As she was about to enter 
the building the fire chief prevented her, and she 
frantically told him that her baby was there. 
The chief declared that the fire had made such 
progress it would be sure death for anyone to 
enter; but one of the firemen stepped forward 
saying he had a child at home, and he believed 
he could save the baby, and asked permission to 
try, and the captain consented. Up the creaking 
stairs he went. He groped his way through smoke 
and flames until he finally found the cradle and 
had the baby in his arms, but just at that mo- 
ment there was a fearful crash and the stairs 
and half of the floor went down, leaving the brave 
fireman in great peril on the side of the house 
where there was no window. With a loud voice 
he called to the men that he could not save him- 
self, but if they got their net ready he could 



THE NEW DUTY 77 

throw the baby out of the window. And in an 
instant with true aim, well bundled in a robe, 
the baby came flying through the window, and 
was soon snug and unhurt in her mother's arms. 

In Greenwood Cemetery there is a modest 
monument to a fireman and there are always 
fresh flowers; and there are frequent visits by a 
beautiful young woman, who, if anyone dared 
to intrude a question, would answer that she 
owed her life to the sacrifice of that brave hero 
in the tenement fire twenty years ago. He broke 
his alabaster box and with it his life, but the 
whole city was filled with the odor of the ointment. 

Not long since I was once more in Niles, Ohio. 
My very first parish was up in the hills just above 
this noisy, smoky little manufacturing city. 
Now, nobody ever thought of Niles as being a 
beautiful place. It is low in its location and the 
lazy, little Mahoning River creeps along the edge 
of the town. There are numberless rolling mills 
which send forth real pillars of cloud by day and 
real pillars of fire by night. There was no special 
elegance in home, or park, or garden. But every- 
thing is all changed now. The other day there 
was dedicated in this town an exquisitely beau- 
tiful Georgia marble memorial building, for Niles 
is the birthplace of William McKinley, and 
within the new structure there is a remarkably 
fine and true statue of the martyred President. 
This beautiful memorial is the gift of those who 
knew and loved one of the best men our nation 



78 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

has produced. But the building, with its glisten- 
ing columns and spacious corridors, and the 
statue and the artistic surroundings have trans- 
formed the whole town. There is now an atmos- 
phere of heroism, of manliness, of patriotism, of 
divinity. One of McKinley's political enemies 
said of him, "McKinley was the most lovable 
man I ever knew." This explains why he was 
honored by his contemporaries and why he will 
not be forgotten by a grateful posterity. 

It is love which makes woman the great human 
power for righteousness in the world. It is the 
mother love which fills a boy's heart with holy 
aspirations. It is the wife's love which sustains 
her husband in every contest and which rewards 
him with tender assurances. 

"Why, man, she is mine own, 
And I as rich in having such a jewel 
As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl, 
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold!" 1 

It is a daughter's and a sister's love which 
sweetens the life of the home and follows the 
father and the brother, and, like an angel of 
light, guards and protects. 

Even God, when he would have his love for 
mankind better understood, allows his prophet 
to tell us that God loves us with a mother's love; 
and when David would adequately describe the 
affection which existed between Jonathan and 
himself, he said it "passed the love of women." 

1 Shakespeare. 



THE NEW DUTY 79 

In a peculiar sense God made woman to love and 
to be loved; and no woman reaches her highest 
ideals except as she is lovable; and it should not 
be less so with man. Of the true man it must 
be said, 

"The loving are the daring, 

The bravest are the tenderest." 

It is not weakness in a man to wish to be 
loved and to love strongly in return. The 
Corinthian column is not less enduring because 
it combines beauty and strength. 

If we become godlike, we will love, for God 
is love. If we become Christlike, we will want 
to be loved, for did not Jesus say to Peter, "Lov- 
est thou me?" and we will freely dispense our 
love, for it is said that "Jesus beholding the young 
man, loved him." 



V 

SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 



Riches I have not sought and have not found, 

And fame has passed me with averted eye; 
In creeks and bays my quiet voyage is bound 

While the great world without goes surging by. 
No withering envy of another's lot, 

No nightmare of contention plagues my rest, 
For me alike what is and what is not, 

Both what I have and what I lack is best, 
A flower more sacred than far-seen success 

Perfumes my solitary path. I find 
Sweet compensation in my humbleness 

And reap the harvest of a tranquil mind. 

— J. T. Trowbridge. 

O dere ain't no use ob frettin' 

Ef de sky ark cold and gray; 
Keep a whislin' and a singin' 

An' de clouds will roll away; 
You am boun' to meet wif tempests 

As you trable down de road, 
An' de sorrows you must carry 

Am a mighty heaby load; 
But no trouble's gwin' to crush you 

Ef you only keep in min' 
Dat de Lawd am in his heabens, 

An' de sun am boun' to shine! 

— Julia A. Galloway. 



CHAPTER V 
SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 

The New Day must be a hope day, a happy 
day. He who seeks for happiness alone will 
never find it, but he who seeks to be useful will 
find happiness at every turn. 

There are two things which man has joined 
together that God would put asunder. They 
are close together in the dictionary. They are 
closer together in the ceaseless combats of human 
experience. Like gladiators they have sought for 
ascendency through many bitter encounters. The 
one comes from above, the other from beneath. 
The one stands for light, the other for darkness. 
The one leads to triumph, the other to tragedy. 
These age-long enemies are Optimism and 
Pessimism. 

Pessimism speaks in terms of doubt, despair, 
and death, and teaches that the universe is tend- 
ing toward nothingness. Schopenhauer, with 
limpid logic, much-vaunted learning, and ghastly 
wit, advanced the grewsome theories of pessimism. 
He declared that this was the worst possible 
world; that it is better to be dead than to be 
alive; and that existence itself is an evil. 

The favorite refrain of pessimism is a familiar 

83 



84 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

but dismal quatrain from the paganistic philos- 
ophy of the Rubaiyat: 

"A moment's halt — a momentary taste 
Of being from the well amid the waste — 
And lo! — the phantom caravan has reached 
The nothing it set out from — oh, make haste!" 

The pessimist exaggerates the evils of life, 
and looks always on the dark side. He indulges 
in melancholy and depressing views of men and 
things. He becomes cynical, hypercritical, and 
misanthropic. He is one who, as Mark Twain 
said, has the choice of two evils and takes them 
both. 

Optimism is founded upon the metaphysical 
doctrine of Leibnitz that the existing universe 
is the best of all universes: that the universe 
steadily advances as a whole. Christian opti- 
mism teaches that there is no limit to spiritual 
development; that all forces can so cooperate as 
to result in a higher realization of God, of self, 
of duty and of life. It does not accept the false, 
fatalistic philosophy of Pope that ''Whatever is 
is right," or that "Partial evil is the general 
good." This Calvinistic philosophy, with its in- 
exorable predestination exploitations, was aban- 
doned long ago as heartlessly inconsistent with 
human volition and divine goodness. 

Optimism believes that there is perfect design 
in history, as well as in the universe; that the 
fittest survives; that "all things work together 
for good to those who love God." Optimism is 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 85 

obedience; optimism is order; optimism is peace; 
optimism is happiness; optimism is life. 

Optimism does not embrace that fantastic, easy- 
going, laissez-faire policy, which would let well- 
enough alone, but it aggressively and enthusi- 
astically dedicates itself to accelerating the upward 
trend by being itself better, and helping others 
to be better. It declares with the great apostle 
of optimism, "Ye cannot do anything against 
the Truth, but for the Truth." 

Optimism believes in the final supremacy of 
good over evil, of the best over the worst, that 
God is stronger than the Devil, and that though 
we may lose a battle, we shall win in the war. 

The cheerful vesper hymn of optimism sings: 

"Whichever way the wind doth blow, 
Some heart is glad to have it so; 
Then blow it east, or blow it west, 
The wind that blows, that wind is best. 

Optimism is the sunshine — pessimism is the 
shadow; pessimism follows dolefully upon the 
heels of optimism. Perhaps it is well for optimism 
sometimes to hear the gloomy prognostications 
of pessimism, otherwise optimism might fail to 
comprehend the gravity and strength of evil, 
and the necessity of incessant vigilance and 
stratagem. 

If pessimists were loyal to their own melancholy 
philosophy, they should go off to the edge of 
the world and throw themselves over. I would 



86 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

not be a pessimist with the clammy sweat of 
death and fear always on my brow. 

I should rather be an optimist, even incurring 
some danger of fanaticism. If the impossible 
theories of pessimism were partially correct, I 
should rather hasten to extinction on a band- 
wagon of music and hope than to make the 
journey in the dismal confines of a patrol wagon, 
or a "Black Maria." 

An optimist goes out and tries to get some- 
thing done, while a pessimist stays at home and 
wonders why he doesn't do it some other way. 

The great theme of the universe is the evolu- 
tion of the good, the unfolding of the best. There 
is an upward trend. The lower moves into the 
higher. When the doughty Carlyle was told 
that Margaret Fuller had concluded to accept 
the universe, the facetious Scotchman replied, 
"She'd better." 

We would better accept the universe; it is 
beneficent. The movement is from the simple 
to the complex; out of chaos into order, out of 
decay into growth; triumph out of tragedy, 
victory out of defeat, and hope out of despair. 

Life is the climax of all creation, and life is 
moving on toward perfection. Life persists. It 
resists, it defies extinction; if crushed and broken, 
it seeks to recover itself. 

"Persistency of force," is a phrase suggested 
by Herbert Spencer to sum up all the laws of 
mechanics; so the "Persistency of Life" sums 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 87 

up all the laws of force. It is man's duty and 
privilege to live, and never, even in old age, 
should there be any cessation of his purpose to 
live. 

Civilization is but the increased appreciation 
of life and the privilege of living. Life is oppor- 
tunity, power, character, immortality. 

Christianity has surpassed all other forms of 
truth, because it more highly values human and 
soul life. The longevity of the race steadily in- 
creases under the benign influence of Christ. 
No circumstances of disaster or disappointment 
should be allowed to discourage and defeat the 
purposes of our lives. Many persons lapse into 
inactivity and uselessness because they have 
encountered an inimical influence and have suf- 
fered defeat. 

An incontrovertible argument that God is the 
great conservator of human life, and does not 
send disease, may be found in the fact that where 
Christian ideas are adopted the number and 
virulency of diseases diminish and longevity 
steadily increases. 

To-day the conservation of human life is 
everywhere the watchword. The last census 
shows that the death rate is 15.4 in each thousand 
of the population. The prolongation of life means, 
of course, the decrease of invalidism and the con- 
sequent increase of happiness and productive 
power. 

The gain to humanity is due to systematic 



88 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

research to discover the cause and prevention of 
disease; the finding of new remedies and anti- 
toxins for prevalent diseases; the increase of 
hospitals and training schools for nurses; the 
campaign against tuberculosis and typhoid, and 
other infections; the penalties imposed upon those 
who sell tainted articles of food, etc. 

It is said that there are in this country an- 
nually six hundred and fifty thousand preventible 
deaths. Nothing can be more unjust or untrue 
than to claim that our heavenly Father sends 
disease; that in the culture tubes of his mysterious 
laboratory he is producing all sorts of infectious 
germs, and scattering the contents of this Pan- 
dora's box among a helpless and hapless human- 
ity. Such an idea is sheer nonsense. We have 
passed that mediaeval fetish long ago. 

In Havana the death rate after American occu- 
pation fell from fifty to twenty. In Lawrence, 
Massachusetts, after the installation of a new 
water supply the death rate from typhoid was 
reduced eighty per cent. In Prussia the death 
rate from smallpox has been decreased by com- 
pulsory vaccination from 24 to 1.5. The yellow 
fever in the United States has practically dis- 
appeared. At present in Massachusetts life is 
lengthening at the rate of about fourteen years 
per century; in Europe about seventeen; in 
India, where medical progress is practically un- 
known, it remains stationary. It is now math- 
ematically estimated that at least fifteen years 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 89 

can be added to the average human life by living 
up to our present medical knowledge. 

In the interest of the conservation of life 
every saloon and tobacco store should be closed. 
Narcotics, stimulants, gluttony, unchastity, ne- 
glect of hygiene and sanitation are all prolific 
sources of disease. The deadly leprosy of the 
social evil should be suppressed; degenerates 
should not be permitted to marry, and all sani- 
tation laws should be rigidly enforced. 

The day is coming when no man shall be 
legally permitted to make a dollar or indulge an 
appetite at the expense of the health or long 
life of himself or another. 

Happiness is the goal which all are seeking, a 
secret which all would find. It is our duty to 
be happy; it is our right to be happy. The philos- 
opher's stone, which can transform all the dross 
of life into purest joys, is hope. The fabled 
fountain which will insure eternal youth and 
beauty is contentment. True happiness is not 
only a duty and a right, but it is a possible pos- 
session; it is the sure prize of those who seek 
aright. 

There is an intricate and exquisite conspiracy 
in the universe to make men happy. There are 
carnivals of beauty, panoramas of splendor, 
oratorios of music, laughing waters, dancing sun- 
beams, singing birds, chanting seas, delicious 
fruits, and enchanting flowers. Nature is not 
cruel, health is contagious, and there is a survival 



90 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

of the fittest. "The common course of things is 
in favor of happiness; happiness is the rule, misery- 
is the exception." 1 

As God made the sun to shine, and the flowers 
to bloom, and the seas to ebb and flow, so he 
made man to be happy. "If any man is un- 
happy," said a wise man, "this must be his own 
fault, for God made all men to be happy." The 
very law of our being is happiness. A crime is 
an offense against the laws of God and man; 
unhappiness is such an offense, hence a crime and 
a tragedy. 

Happiness may be discovered in life's activities 
— in unremitting endeavor; not in the bluster 
and haste which enervate and defeat, but in the 
constant use of our capacities. Unrest and 
atrophy occur when energies are allowed to be- 
come stagnant. An aimless life is always an 
unhappy life. 

Leisure and rest have exquisite flavor where 
they are the punctuation points of duties faith- 
fully discharged and ambitions steadily realized. 
Activity defies infirmity, and octogenarians like 
John Wesley, John G. Whittier, and William 
Ewart Gladstone hold old age at bay while they 
elaborate the closing achievements of eventful 
careers. 

Struggle is necessary to strength. The benev- 
olently inclined young lady who cut off the tail 
of the pollywog to hasten the stages of its evolu- 

l PaIey. 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 91 

tion wept in dismay when she found she had 
ended the life of the little dismembered creature. 
It needed the labor of getting rid of its tail to 
develop strength for the responsibilities of its 
promotion. 

If there are stunted growths and undeveloped 
lives among the youth of these prosperous dec- 
ades, may it not be that our educational and 
domestic methods are affording too much assist- 
ance, or ease, or luxury to these little human 
pollywogs? Every faculty of our being is made 
more robust by constant and sensible activity. 
To be able to bring things to pass conduces to 
true happiness. 

What real joy is stored away in a good book! 
Study may be found an unfailing source of pleas- 
ure. We can read great books until their authors 
become our abiding companions. A few years 
ago I rambled among the tombs of Mount Auburn 
and Sleepy Hollow. I found myself truly offended 
when I saw gravestones which bore the names 
of Lowell, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and 
Agassiz. For who, that is daily associating with 
these choice spirits in the precious legacy of the 
books they have written, can believe that these 
men are dead? No, they live, and are more 
universally alive to-day than when they threaded 
the streets of Cambridge, or walked among the 
shady bowers of Concord. 

The culture of the mind brings forth the flower 
and the fragrance and the fruitage of our in- 



92 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

tellectual natures. Truth invigorates; it makes 
buoyant and youthful. Truth is never old, never 
discordant. 

Then, too, what perennial fountains of sparkling 
happiness are found in music, and art, and poetry! 
And what shall be said about nature? If people 
would be happy, they must get out of doors. 
God made the heavens, but man made the houses. 
Many houses are devices of Satan to shut man 
away from his God. 

All nature is redolent of divinity. It is hard 
for a naturalist to be an unbeliever. Some great 
nature students have despised creeds, but maybe 
it was because their great God was too mighty 
to be bounded and measured by man's dialectical 
tapeline or foot rule. We should get out of doors. 
God, music, might, seas, trees, mountains, and 
men are out of doors; and if we would be happy, 
we must associate with the world outside, for 
we have a divine commission to subdue the earth. 
The "flower in the crannied wall" has yet many 
beautiful lessons for the thoughtful student. 

The widow of Schumann says that whenever 
she was to play in public any of her husband's 
music, she would read over and over again the 
dear love letters he had written her during his 
life. All true love is divine, and what we call 
human love is really divine love, and is one of 
our earthly faculties which is the sure prophecy 
of the estate of infinity to which we are going, 
as it is the token of the infinite heart from which 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 93 

we have sprung. No man can be truly happy 
who does not truly love, or is not truly loved. 
"The greatest of these is love." 

If we would see the blue in the sky in the 
hurrying years, we must be busy doing good and 
useful things. Not like the animals, which by 
hunger and necessity and self-preservation are 
"irritated into action." People should do good 
for the love of goodness. No man is a soldier 
who must be driven to battle. No boy is a scholar 
who must be flogged to school. No man is good 
who must be scourged to duty. "A man is not 
good at all unless he takes pleasure in noble 
deeds. No man would call a man just who did 
not take pleasure in justice, nor generous who 
took no pleasure in acts of generosity." 1 

True happiness is hidden away in honest toil. 
The busy man is the contented man! 

"Get leave to work 
In this world — 'tis the best you get at all; 
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts 
Than men in benediction; God says 'sweat' 
For foreheads; men say 'crowns'; and so we're crowned, 
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel 
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work; get work; 
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get." 2 

The blue sky is always found in service. He 
who would be "happy" among you, as well as 
"he who would be chief among you, must be the 
servant of all." When the old French nobility 

'Aristotle. 2 Mrs. Browning. 



94 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

chose as their motto, "Noblesse oblige," they 
simply accentuated one of the finest principles 
of the social organism, that "rank or privilege is 
obligation." Autocracies, feudal systems, wars, 
and all selfish ambitions must gradually go down 
before such a scepter. He who is not capable 
of service is not capable of joy. 

The places of honor in the true nobility of 
earth are reserved for those who most affection- 
ately serve their fellow men — these will outrank 
all hereditary titles and positions. 

A recent writer has felicitously and truly sug- 
gested that all humanity can be divided between 
"makers of joy and makers of sorrow." She 
says: "This older psychology which divided men 
dogmatically into good and bad, wise and foolish, 
strong and weak, pure and impure, atheist and 
believer, contained too many, or too insufficient 
shades of differences. Would it not be better 
and more practical to divide men henceforth into 
two new classes, corresponding to the future 
tendencies toward which we are drifting — 'Makers 
of Sorrow' and 'Makers of Joy,' since every day 
it becomes more evident that this classification 
will become the true measure of man's worth? 
Christianity seems foremost in returning to simple 
formulas and concentrating her forces on two 
principal ideas: the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man." 1 

We will easily find the blue in our own skies 

1 Dora Melegari of Italy. 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 95 

if we help to clear away the clouds from the 
skies of others. It is, indeed, an irony of fate 
that some of the world's best benefactors have 
often received despicable treatment from human- 
ity. The early Methodists were denounced as 
"consecrated cobblers" and a "nest of vermin," 
by men who dipped their pens in gall. Dwight 
L. Moody was refused a license to preach be- 
cause of his poor grammar. A Chicago publisher 
told me regretfully that he refused the manu- 
script of In His Steps when Charles M. Sheldon 
sent it to him for publication. It is not forgotten 
that the students at Edinburgh nicknamed Walter 
Scott "the great blockhead." Longfellow was 
refused fourteen dollars for his "Excelsior" by an 
insulting publisher; and where are the people now 
who laughed at a poor and lonely young man 
who appeared in the streets of Boston one winter 
day in linen trousers, known to-day as the Wizard 
of Menlo Park — Thomas A. Edison? When will 
a thoughtless humanity profit by the fact that 
"Seven cities contend for Homer dead through 
which the living Homer begged his bread"? 

Since all clouds have a silver lining and every 
dark shadow has a bright side — for there would 
be no shadows if there were no sun — if anyone 
would be happy, he must look for the blue in 
the sky. It may be his duty, unlike the sun dial, 
to mark other than the bright hours, but he will 
not be wise unless he adopts the motto of a vener- 
able English bishop, "Serve God and be cheerful." 



96 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

It is hard to persuade some people to be Chris- 
tians when it is seen that occasionally the most 
unhappy and most disagreeable people pose in a 
community as Christians. One of the first things 
true religion does for some people is to make 
it possible for other people to live with them. 
It may be possible that fault-finding and com- 
plaining people will escape misery, but it is cer- 
tain that those who have to live with them 
do not. I am sure God has a special crown of 
beauty in heaven for those persons who are com- 
pelled to live on earth with disagreeable and 
cynical people. 

The tender and the witty Hood said: 

"No solemn and sanctimonious face I pull, 
And think I am pious when I am only bilious." 

What is the use of worrying? None, because 
worry unfits for the battle of life; it is like coward- 
ice to the soldier; it takes away poise and nerve 
and destroys capacity to enjoy even after we 
have attained. It is a species of fatalism, a soul 
malady which, unless cured, often leads to de- 
mentia and death. 

People worry about the past because of lost 
opportunity and what they might have been. 
The past is useful only as it instructs and inspires 
for the future. 

We worry about the future and weaken our- 
selves for the conflict by fearful forebodings 
which are never fulfilled. The first steamship 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 97 

which ever crossed the Atlantic carried in its 
cargo copies of Dr. Lardner's famous but useless 
book, which was laboriously written to prove 
that it was an utter impossibility for a steamship 
to carry enough coal to make the voyage from 
Liverpool to New York. 

Israel's warrior poet was acquainted with the 
tendency of men to overanxiety, for he wrote 
in one of his most thrilling poems, "Fret not 
thyself because of evildoers." Good is stronger 
than evil, or else the world long ago would have 
been destroyed. 

A merry heart sees the bright side of things. 
It believes that the blackest cloud has a silver 
lining. It does not allow itself to be overwhelmed 
with anxiety, and is patient in the midst of 
uncertainty. It is sustained by an unfaltering 
trust and does not murmur while purposes are 
ripening. 

It is commonly reported that a cat has nine 
lives, but from my childhood I have heard that 
once care killed a cat. I used to wonder when 
I was a lad about "corroding care" and what 
it was, but I understand better now, and realize 
what Shakespeare means when he says, 

"Care is no cure, but rather a corrosive 
For things that are not to be remedied." 

Care, indeed, is a corrosive sublimate and is 
a deadly poison to happiness, and, sooner or 
later, to life. 



98 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Why are we everlastingly after more things, 
more money, more lands, more houses, more 
clothes? Certainly we know that 

"Old care has a mortgage on every estate 
And that's what you pay for the wealth that you get." 1 

The United States Public Health Service has 
been saying some practical things on this subject: 

"The birds build nests for the protection of 
their young against the weather, the foxes dig 
holes for security against foes, the squirrels lay 
by stores of nuts against the coming of winter, 
and dogs bury bones against the day when bones 
will be scarce. These are the manifestations of a 
normal protective instinct arising from an expe- 
rience of many, many generations. So far as is 
known, though, no bird ever tried to build more 
nests than his neighbor; no fox ever fretted be- 
cause he only had one hole in which to hide; 
no squirrel ever died of anxiety lest he should 
not lay by enough nuts for two winters instead of 
one; and no dog ever lost any sleep over the fact 
that he didn't have enough bones laid aside to 
provide for his declining years. 

"This protective instinct is also present in the 
human mind, and when properly directed is a 
great source of prosperity both to the individual 
and the nation. In order for man to store up 
and lay by, to gain advancement either in honor 
or material things, it is necessary that he take 

1 John G. Saxe. 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 99 

some forethought of the morrow, but just so 
soon as he carries this beyond the normal point, 
the mental process becomes an exaggerated and 
abnormal one. The normal protective instinct is 
stimulated by a normal fear of those events which 
are reasonably sure to happen in the future 
unless means are adopted against them. The 
moment that this fear becomes abnormal or ex- 
aggerated it overstimulates this protective in- 
stinct, and to no good purpose because it results 
in worry." 

Worry is, therefore, an abnormal state, and 
we should study to prevent the cause of worry; 
and when troubles come, as they are bound to 
come to every one, if we shall have endeavored 
to cultivate the tranquil mind, the momentum of 
a quiet spirit will carry us over the testing mo- 
ments which sorrow and adversity may bring. 
There appeared one like unto the Son of God 
in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew chil- 
dren. We cannot afford to be whimsical and 
childish when the trial of our manhood and 
womanhood occurs. The worries of to-day are 
the jokes of to-morrow. 

If a man would live on twenty-four hours a 
day and be happy and useful, he must learn how 
to play. At a little wayside resort in New Eng- 
land is the sign, "Why not Rest?" People be- 
come thin and scrawny who will not rest and 
play. People who play pray better. People 
who play pay better, and only those who play 



100 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

once in a while know how delicious is work. 
Old fundamental educational ideals down to a 
half a century ago excluded play, but Froebel's 
initiative is generally followed in all educational 
systems to-day. Play is relaxation, it is the 
physical exercise which furnishes a needed tonic 
for the nerves and rest for the brain. If a man 
would live to be old, he must faithfully use his 
twenty-four hours a day. "Every man desires 
to live long, but no man would be old." 1 

A man is old when his work is done. "I feel 
as young as ever I did," is the exultant cry of 
the man who is "still achieving, still pursuing." 
Men at work forget to grow old. "A man is as 
young as he feels, a woman is as old as she looks." 

Bounding ambition is a fine specific against in- 
firmity. When W. W. Story was asked which 
one of his masterpieces in marble gave him the 
most satisfaction, he replied, "The one I am now 
working upon." 

"Give me health and a day," cried the philos- 
opher. Ability and opportunity with health and 
a day mean long and successful living, and the 
defeat of old age. 

"Forenoon and afternoon and night, Forenoon 

and afternoon and night — Forenoon and — What? 
The empty song repeats itself. No more? 
Yes, what is life; make this forenoon sublime, 
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer; 
And time is conquered, and thy crown is won." 2 

•Swift. 'E. R. Sill. 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 101 

A man in Eugene, Oregon, recently gave fifty 
thousand dollars to found a theological seminary 
in connection with the State University. A few 
days later he was nearly struck by an automobile; 
when he saw he wasn't killed, not even hurt, he 
burst out in such a volley of profanity that they 
arrested him and fined him five dollars for break- 
ing the city ordinance. Many a man by his 
own inconsistencies invalidates much of the good 
he endeavors to do. After all, what a man does 
will not be more influential for good than what 
a man is. His ideals will furnish direction and 
momentum to the arrows which go from his bow. 
Character is the principal thing! That man 
will not be able to make a life on twenty-four 
hours a day or on twenty-four times twenty- 
four hours who has not learned that he who 
cheats his fellowmen cheats and defeats him- 
self. 

There is a glad side of things, and it is the 
factorship of hope to find the bright side, to 
dwell among the bright things, to preach the 
gospel of the light, to rejoice evermore and to 
keep this old earth ringing with gladdest music. 
As the light pierces the black night with its 
blazing shafts, so must hope run its aisles of 
brightness through all ^the gloom and despair of 
life. 

The glad side of things may be logically pred- 
icated and established upon a few simple prin- 
ciples of Christian philosophy. God rules! — 



102 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

sometimes in "a mysterious way, his wonders 
to perform," but 

"His purposes are ripening fast, 
Unfolding every hour." 

There is a distinct upward tendency in the trend 
of human events. God has been present at all 
of the pivotal points in history — constraining, re- 
buking, and controlling. A careful study of the 
philosophy of history shows unmistakably the 
influence of a great power. Design is as distinct 
in history as in the printing press. There is a 
manifest survival of the fittest — all history sus- 
tains the claim of Jesus Christ — "the meek shall 
inherit the earth." Paul's dictum, "All things 
work together for good," has been continually 
demonstrated in the lives of those who fill the 
conditions of the promise, "to them that love 
God." Love is obedience, obedience is order, 
order is peace, and peace is happiness. 

There may be a "glad side" even of mistakes. 
Milton used to say, "I care not how many errors 
are loose in the world, so long as truth is left to 
run among them." John Brown's error at Har- 
pers Ferry helped a nation of patriots to find 
out the true way. There is great cause for anxiety, 
and for awakening from lethargy on account of 
the evils around us, but there is really no ground 
for pessimism. A principle of Schopenhauer's 
pessimistic philosophy is that "life is an evil"; 
he joins hands with the Buddhist in welcoming 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 103 

death. Pessimism and paganism are despair, but 
Christianity is hope. 

There is a "glad side" to all of the trials and 
conflicts of life. Struggle has characterized all 
advancement. Time is usually indispensable to 
success. "All things come round to him who 
will but wait." Justice is sometimes delayed, but 
the Dreyfuses are often brought back from exile. 
A tiny baby was left on a doorstep. He was 
without a name, and because he was a child he 
was called George Washington Childs. At his 
death multitudes mourned his death and rejoiced 
on account of his life. He was a great journalist 
and a boundless benefactor. Thomas A. Edison 
was born in poverty, and at twelve years of age 
was a train-boy on the Grand Trunk Railway. 
The great Whitefield helped himself through Ox- 
ford by blacking the shoes of the students. Nearly 
every rich man in this country began life as a 
poor boy. Bunyan and Cervantes wrote their 
great masterpieces in prison; and but for the 
afflictions of Milton and Dante and Scott there 
would have been no "Paradise Lost," no "Divine 
Comedy," and no "Ivanhoe." Nearly all great 
philanthropies have been established, and are 
liberally sustained, by those who have suffered. 
During the Crimean War a cannon ball plowed 
its way into a beautiful garden inside a fort, and 
immediately there sprung up a fountain of cool 
water. Trials often discover and develop the 
best qualities of the soul. Patient struggle 



104 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

usually achieves, though sometimes victory comes 
with tardy feet. When somebody sympathized 
with an Irish hod-carrier because of his heavy 
load and the high ladders, he replied, "Och, be- 
gorra, I am coming down half of the timel" 

There are even silver linings to the dark clouds 
of affliction and death, when the toilsome tapestry 
weaver remembers that the dark threads must 
be woven with the bright ones, if the pattern of 
life shall be wrought in harmony with the Master's 
great thought. 

The most miraculous thing that happens any 
glorious day is the sunrise in the morning, but 
there is not a sound — not a discordant note. 
Rosy-fingered Aurora rolls up out of the night 
in her chariot of fire; there is not a rumble of 
the golden wheels; there is no champing of the 
bits of the fiery steeds. All is a bursting climax 
of blazing quietness. 

"See now, that radiant bow of pillared fires 
Spanning the hills like dawn until they lie in soft tranquillity 
And all night's ghostly glooms asunder roll." 1 

Cicero in one of his orations told the Roman 
people that "a happy life consists in tranquillity 
of mind." 

Do we not love that sweet word "serenity"? 
The "sweet serenities" of the hills. The highest 
hilltops are the quietest, so is there calm in the 
altitude of lofty character. The "sweet serenities" 

1 D. M. Mulock. 



SEEING THE BLUE IN THE SKY 105 

of love. Modern life is such a noisy thing. It 
is a wonder that young people can fall in love 
with such disturbing noises everywhere. When we 
select our homes we should choose a quiet street. 
The trolley, the telephone, the automobile are 
such disquieting things. No wonder love now 
and then has a hard time in the homes where 
there is so much confusion — so much buzzing. I 
tried to make my sermons for five years with the 
continuous roar of an elevated railroad not two 
hundred feet from my study windows. Nobody 
ever did, ever can do his best in a ceaseless clash 
of discordant sounds. "Quietness is strength." 
No wonder Emerson and Hawthorne and Thoreau 
and Alcott, and later Trowbridge could unfold a 
permanent literature in the haunts of peaceful 
Concord. If a cruel fate had placed them in a 
crowded Boston town, probably their work would 
never have been immortalized. Genius needs 
quietude. 

No wonder a certain business man of Los 
Angeles has been compelled to go away for a long 
rest. I was in his office some weeks ago. His 
windows opened upon one of Broadway's busiest 
corners, and the tall buildings made a sounding 
board, and wild tornadoes of noises rolled up 
from the streets below and made a conversation 
nearly impossible. There is health in quietness, 
there is mental tenacity in serenity. 

In nature growth is not because of storms but 
in spite of them. The tornado devastates; the 



106 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

flood uproots and lays waste, but in the calm of 
day, in the serenity of the night, the mighty 
forest trees sink deep and the gentle flowers dis- 
till their fragrant alembics. 

In "quietness there is strength, beauty," soul. 
God made ten hours of night that in the tran- 
quillity of sleep man should soothe his spirit, 
smooth out the furrowed brow, and relax the 
hard lines of care. The miracle of balmy sleep 
is nature's "sweet restorer." A man is fit for 
any task who will sleep enough. Sleep will 

make him 

"Serene, and resolute, and still 
And calm and self-possessed." 1 

"Still waters run deep." When the heart is 
fathomless in its love; when the brain is deep and 
thoughtful; when the faith reaches the depths 
of love divine; when the currents of life run in 
deep safe channels, then character is reaching 
some of its holiest possibilities. The shallow 
stream frets and foams and in the thirst of 
some hot sun it disappears. The mighty Nile, 
fed by the mountain snows, makes its way through 
blistering deserts safely to the sea. Tranquillity 
of soul is the reward of close communion with 
the Great Serene Christ of the skies. 

1 Longfellow. 



VI 

THE NEW MINISTRY 



Bobbie Burns once in his diary wrote: "If ever any young 
man in the vestibule of the world chance to throw his eyes over 
these pages, let him pay a warm attention to the following obser- 
vations, as I assure him that they are the fruit of a poor devil's 
dear-bought experience. I have literally, like that great poet, 
the great gallant, and by consequence great fool, Solomon, 
turned my eyes to behold madness and folly; nay, I have with 
all the ardor of a lively, fanciful, and whimsical imagination, 
shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. In the first 
place, let my pupil, as he values his own peace, keep up a regular 
and warm intercourse with the Deity." 

Burns's love escapades and his moral lapses were not because 
he had the base instincts of the profligate and degenerate fiber- 
tine, but because he lacked self-control. He was the true friend 
of men and the gallant defender of true womanhood, but his big, 
affectionate nature went astray at times, because he did not, in 
his own words, "keep up a regular and warm intercourse with 
the Deity." 

Bobbie Burns's tender and pathetic exhortation to us is, "Keep 
up a regular and warm intercourse with the Deity." As his 
shipwrecked bark tragically sinks in the turbulent tide of a wild 
sea, he calls back to us, "Keep up a regular and warm inter- 
course with the Deity." 



CHAPTER VI 
THE NEW MINISTRY 

While angels have occupied a beautifully 
conspicuous place in the administration of God's 
providences in the past, and no doubt many- 
times appeared in person to direct and bless, it 
must be acknowledged that during the Christian 
dispensation there is no record that angels have 
personally conferred with the holy men and 
women of earth. This is, no doubt, because we 
are dwelling in the dispensation of the Holy 
Spirit, that mysterious and sublime Comforter 
whom Jesus said he would send when he went 
away. Nevertheless, if any person who has a 
message and a ministry is one of God's angels, 
then the world is fuller of angels of God to-day 
than ever before in all the years. 

When we read, "He shall give his angels charge 
over thee to keep thee," we are to understand 
that we are not only depending for guidance and 
protection upon the heavenly host of angels, but 
we are likewise to be protected and guided by 
those persons on earth who have a ministry and 
a message to the world from God. 

Why, then, is not the farmer one of God's 
angels, for with his industry in planting and 
sowing and reaping is he not rendering a minis- 

109 



110 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

try to the physical needs of mankind? It is folly 
for us to depend upon heavenly visitants to supply 
us with food if we do not accept the ministry of 
the faithful farmer who comes to our doors with 
the rewards of his labors to satisfy our hunger. 

And so of the teacher of truth. He finds out 
the hidden things of God and comes to the world 
with a message. It is equal folly for us to expect 
some heavenly guest to come to us and reveal 
to us the wonders of astronomy and chemistry 
and philosophy when by applying our humble 
gifts we can acquire knowledge from faithful 
teachers. Are not these teachers also God's 
angels? 

In this fearful world crisis through which 
civilization and the divine ideals of freedom and 
justice and righteousness have been passing, God 
might have sent skies full of heavenly armies 
to fight against a savage autocracy, but he did 
not. However, were not these mighty hosts of 
magnificent men from England, Canada, Aus- 
tralia, France, Italy, and America God's angels 
as they went forth with a gallant and ready minis- 
try of military skill? 

It is just as true that God has given his angels 
charge over us to keep us when these human 
armies of human angels have willingly responded 
to the call of God and duty, as if militant Michael 
had led a host out of the skies and defeated the 
hostile hosts of Berlin. 

And, too, when disease comes among us we are 



THE NEW MINISTRY 111 

not fanatically and ignorantly to lift our eyes 
toward the skies and expect heavenly angels to 
come down and protect or cure. They do not 
come down and till our fields and harvest the 
crops. They do not come to occupy the teachers' 
chairs in public school and college. They do not 
come down to fight our battles in France against 
the savage Hun. Why should we expect that 
they will come to combat disease when, under 
the direction of God's Holy Spirit, men have 
gone forth and made a study of the cause and 
cure of disease, and in many cases have dis- 
covered absolute specifics against some diseases 
and absolute cures for other diseases? Are not 
skillful physicians and devoted nurses as much 
God's angels, as they come with their intelligent 
and sympathetic ministries, as if Gabriel came out 
of the skies to touch the sick and make them well? 

Therefore, when we are hungry, or ignorant, or 
assailed by a wicked foe, or ill, or exposed to 
illness or danger, we must accept the ministry 
and the message of those about us who are pre- 
pared to give to us a message and a ministry if 
we would have the care of God's angels whom a 
kind heavenly Father has sent to protect and 
bless, comfort and keep us in all our ways. 

The wonderful ninety-first psalm must not be 
misunderstood. Like the thirty-fifth chapter of 
Isaiah, which says, "No lion shall be there, nor 
any ravenous beast shall go up thereon," and 
the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, which declares 



112 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy 
mountain," the statements of the ninety-first 
psalm are partly in the nature of a prophecy, and 
describe the condition which shall be enjoyed 
when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge 
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." 

It is evident that those who refuse to plant 
and harvest, and simply trust that God will give 
his angels charge over them, will starve to death. 
And those who will not study, but who simply 
trust God's angels to give them intelligence, will 
remain in ignorance; and it is just as true that 
when disease is abroad if we refuse to accept the 
attention of faithful physicians and use care, and 
quarantine, and specifics, and other preventives, 
and merely trust that God will give his angels 
charge over us to keep us in all our ways, we 
will be likely to suffer and die of epidemics and 
malignant diseases. 

We are to pray and trust. Just as we trust God 
for water, but we dig wells and gather water in 
reservoirs, so in all other physical matters we are 
to use the resources which a kind heavenly Father 
has deposited in the air and earth and water; and 
some day, when diseases and crime and selfishness 
are gone out of the world — as they must go when 
Christ comes in in his fulness — then "there shall 
no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come 
nigh thy dwelling," because all evil shall have 
been driven out, and all tragic contagions shall 
have disappeared. 



THE NEW MINISTRY 113 

Just so long as people are careless, and poverty, 
bad sanitation, crime, and licensed evils are per- 
mitted to exist, the followers of God will not be 
immune from suffering and the good will suffer 
with the bad. And it is the height of folly simply 
to pray for God's spiritual angels when God's 
human angels are all about us ready to defend 
and minister. 

It is the duty of all God's believers to make 
a strong and steady assault against the lions and 
the adders and the young lions and the dragons 
which invest society, and help to build the great 
highway which shall be called "the way of holi- 
ness," where "the redeemed of the Lord shall 
walk," and where "they shall obtain joy and 
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away," 
and "a little child shall lead them." 

Some of these victorious days God's human 
angels will have so come up to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty that all wars and pov- 
erties and vices and diseases will be gone for- 
ever from the habitations of mankind. 

There is no honor or happiness equal to being 
even one of God's most humble human angels. 
I think more of Martha than of her sister Mary, 
for while Mary sat and dreamed of God's spiritual 
angels and folded her hands in solemn medita- 
tion, Martha went about a busy ministry. Mary 
cast her burden on the Lord, and, as Kipling says, 
the Lord placed it upon Martha. Whenever 
people in their misapprehensions refuse to carry 



114 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

their own care some one else has to carry it 
for them. All honor and praise to the human 
angels who not only see the things that ought 
to be done, but who go forward to do them. 

One afternoon at a hospital recently I was 
greeted by one of the capable and successful 
young doctors of the city. He was big, strong, 
jovial, happy in his skillful ministries to his many 
patients. One week from that time he fell a 
victim to the prevailing disease, and a little wife 
and her baby, and many little mothers and their 
babies will miss the love and the tender ministries 
of a beloved husband and an attentive physician. 
I think that when that noble fellow appeared in 
the skies he was given the rich reward of being 
one of God's human angels. 

And in a thousand years the stain of brutality 
which indelibly disgraces German militarism can 
never be wiped out as the story of the martyr- 
dom of the trained nurse, gentle, fearless, beauti- 
ful Edith Cavell, is told and retold. She was 
one of God's human angels to take her immortal 
place beside Florence Nightingale, "the angel 
of the Crimea." Her last words before those 
cruel demons shot were: "I see now that patriot- 
ism is not enough; I must die without hatred or 
bitterness toward anyone. I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me." 

And when the Hun was devastating innocent 
and helpless Belgium was not the faithful priest 
a holy human angel as he remained to plead and 



THE NEW MINISTRY 115 

suffer, not forsaking his post even when he re- 
ceived word from the Vatican that the pope 
could do nothing for the afflicted Roman Catholics 
of Flanders? Most unenviable, indeed, to-day is 
the relation of the Holy See to the great world 
crisis. The huge, autocratic, ecclesiastical organ- 
ization which refused to go to the help of suffer- 
ing Belgium will not find a recovering humanity 
asking for help in the mighty movements of 
world reconstruction. With military autocracy 
gone from Germany and Europe, ecclesiastical 
autocracy will not long be tolerated in Europe and 
the world. The neutrality of the Roman pontiff 
in the hours when religion and justice and right- 
eousness were hanging in the balance was ecclesi- 
asticism's unpardonable sin. The fetish of papal 
infallibility is both pitiful and ludicrous, but 
Father Mercier was one of God's human an- 
gels. 

And what shall be said of those human angels 
who, as loving parents, bring to the home their 
tender ministries and messages? After one of 
those fearful attacks upon our American boys at 
the front, when our line stood firm although many 
brave lads were killed and wounded, John R. 
Mott said to General Edwards: "General, how do 
you explain it? How is it possible for these boys 
to come from their peaceful homes right into 
the teeth of such a terrible experience, and to 
stand up before it like veterans?" 

And the gallant soldier promptly replied: "Mr. 



116 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Mott, it is very simple. I give all the credit to 
the influence of the American mother." 

Even so, the boys of the American army real- 
ized that they were fighting not only to protect 
but to fulfill the ideals and expectations of their 
mothers. This war was, in a way unknown be- 
fore to history, a mother's war. The Prussian 
made his war upon the home and the mother- 
hood of Belgium and France, and the men in the 
Allied armies fought to defend the homes and the 
mothers of the world, and to punish those who 
brought suffering upon mothers and their children. 

"He was a little Belgian lad 

Whom war had somehow failed to mar, 

Almost a baby face he had, 

Bewildered now and vaguely sad. 

'Where are you going in the wind and rain? 
And must you travel far?' 

He said, 'I've started out to find 

The country where the mothers are.' "* 

Gipsy Smith went from England to comfort and 
inspire the brave British boys. One day the 
order came to go "over the top." Gipsy knew the 
boys personally and their fathers and mothers 
and wives and children at home; and just before 
the command was executed, they all knelt to- 
gether and he prayed for them and for the great 
cause for which they were fighting. And away 
they went in a storm of shrapnel and through 
the barbed wire entanglements. It was a deadly 
battle — a fearful shamble. 

1 Grace Hazard Conklin. 



THE NEW MINISTRY 117 

When those who survived came back, Gipsy- 
was waiting for them, and he tells the story: 
"As they were coming back there was a lad on a 
stretcher with his face soaked with blood. I knew 
his mother, and I thought of what she would have 
done. I stooped and 1 kissed his bloody face, in 
memory of the mother. I said to the attendants, 
'How bruised and shattered his head is!' I 
thought the lad was too far gone to understand. 
But he not only understood, he recognized my 
voice. He said, 'Gipsy, am I going to Blighty, 
or am I going West?' And I told him the truth. 
'Son, you are going West.' He was quiet for a 
moment, and then he managed to speak so that 
I could hear him, and he said in short whispering 
gasps: 'Tell Mother I am not afraid to die. Tell 
her I have found Christ. Tell her it is glorious 
to die for liberty.' He had not failed his mother, 
his country, or his God." 

It is not hard for me to believe that Gipsy 
Smith was one of God's angels that day, as he 
ministered to that dying boy, and tenderly kissed 
him in behalf of the little mother at home. 

One radiant California afternoon my pastoral 
duties called me out of my study, and in driving 
along an open part of the city I saw a tiny lad 
with his kite in his hand leave his cozy cottage 
home, and as he departed he called back "Good- 
by, mother!" and with exquisite tenderness a 
gracious young woman replied, "Good-by, my son; 
be careful!" And the little man went off to his 



118 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

happy play; and "Good-by, mother!" and the 
beautiful scene of the mother and her picturesque 
little home lingered with me. And as the years 
come and go wherever that noble boy shall wan- 
der in the flying of his kite of ambition and duty, 
those loving words will follow him — "Good-by, my 
son; be careful!" And no seas will be boisterous 
enough, and no storms thunderous enough, and 
no barrage of battle with its terrific uproar will be 
loud enough to drown the soft accents of that 
sweetest of all voices — "Good-by, my son; be 
careful!" And, perhaps, some day, in the long 
distant future, when the mother is helpless with 
infirmity, she will wholly and trustfully lean upon 
the strong arm and the loving heart of that child 
to full manhood grown. And some unexpected 
day she will glide away upon a quiet sea, and out 
of the golden glory of the sunset hour she will 
again call back to him, "Good-by, my son; be 
careful!" A mother divine, God's most perfect 
creation — one of God's angels. 

"He shall give his angels charge over thee, 
To keep thee in all thy ways!" 

As in the past, so in the New Day God must 
needs depend upon his happy human angels. 



VII 
MONUMENTS 



Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, 
Hast built thyself a life-long monument. 

— Milton's Epitaph to Shakespeare. 

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have for- 
gotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, 
not stones, are the true monuments of the great. — Motley. 

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since 
those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recog- 
nition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not 
worthy of one. — Hawthorne. 



CHAPTER VII 
MONUMENTS 

One day, with my heart filled with surging 
emotions and tragic memories, I stood by the 
glistening memorial to William McKinley which 
the sympathetic citizens of Buffalo have erected 
at an advantageous point where many streets 
converge. There it stands in marble beauty, 
pointing its finger to the skies, a token of the pure 
character of a martyr to liberty, and likewise of 
the place where his white soul dwells in eternal 
mansions. 

The custom of rearing monuments to com- 
memorate important historical events, and as 
grateful memorials to personal courage and char- 
acter and achievement, is most ancient. 

Jacob, after his notable night and vision at 
Bethel, where he discovered God in an unexpected 
place, and found the very gate of heaven, erected 
a pillar to mark the event and the spot. 

When the children of Israel passed over the 
Jordan dry shod, they built a monument of twelve 
stones, representing the twelve tribes, to com- 
memorate the fact that God had wrought a 
great miracle in order to deliver his chosen peo- 
ple. 

Poor recalcitrant and disobedient Absalom, fear- 

121 



122 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

ing that "no one would keep his name in remem- 
brance," erected a monument to himself in the 
king's dale, where it still stands; and for hundreds 
of years it has been the custom for each passer-by 
to pick up a stone and hurl it at the tomb to show 
his contempt for the character of this handsome 
ingrate. 

When beautiful Rachel's life went out at the 
birth of Benjamin, Jacob erected a costly and 
graceful pillar over her precious dust. 

The highways of civilization are marked with 
arches, pillars, obelisks, pyramids, and tablets of 
marble and bronze. Among prehistoric peoples 
sepulchral mounds were constructed called tumuli, 
and are found to-day in many parts of America, 
Asia, and Africa. 

At Heliopolis the ancient Egyptians erected a 
Temple to the Sun and a group of obelisks which 
lifted their pink granite fingers like sun's rays 
toward the skies and were covered with strange 
hieroglyphics. They have been called Cleo- 
patra's Needles and have been removed to differ- 
ent parts of the world, one having been placed in 
Central Park, New York city. Only one obelisk 
has been left standing at the site of the ancient 
temple. It is surrounded by the stubble of an 
unfertile grain field, and not far away is a miser- 
able village whose inhabitants eke out a scanty 
subsistence from the baksheesh of the not often 
liberal tourists. 

In the year B. C. 353 King Mausolus at Hali- 



MONUMENTS 123 

carnassus commenced a massive memorial, thus 
giving his own name to the mausoleums of modern 
times. It was completed after his death by Arte- 
mesia, his wife. Scopas and other great sculptors 
and architects immortalized themselves in this 
colossal structure, which came to be known as one 
of the Seven Wonders of the World. To-day 
only bits of the frieze of this remarkable edifice 
remain and may be seen in the British Museum. 
In making excavations a few centuries ago beauti- 
ful colored marbles and elaborately carved col- 
umns were found, but these invaluable treasures 
were heedlessly used for making lime by the ignor- 
ant natives. 

How short-lived, indeed, is the influence of that 
nation which depends upon its material grandeur 
and superstructures to influence succeeding gen- 
erations! 

In 1799 there was found in northern Egypt a 
treasure of great importance to the scholars. It 
is called the Rosetta Stone and bears upon its sur- 
face parallel inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyph- 
ics and in the Greek. By means of the Rosetta 
Stone a key was found to the hieroglyphics which 
until this great discovery had baffled the efforts of 
the most brilliant students, and they were en- 
abled to add much to the verified history of these 
ancient peoples. But among all of the memorial 
stones of other generations none contributed so 
much to the learning of the years as the Moabite 
Stone, which was found in 1868 near Dhiban, east 



124 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

of the Jordan. The Moabite stone was erected 
by Mesha, king of Moab, B. C. 900, in commemo- 
ration of his deliverance from the Israelites. This 
story is engraved on the stone, and is not only the 
oldest monument of the Semitic alphabet, but it 
clearly confirms the Bible history as recorded in 
the book of the Kings. Next to the testimony of 
eyewitnesses, monumental evidence is considered 
the strongest. 

The most remarkable and colossal monument 
on the earth to-day is the Great Pyramid of Egypt, 
built by Cheops in the year 2800 before Christ. 
There it stands defying the ravages of the tooth of 
time, and mutely telling of the gigantic enterprise 
of a bygone age. Isaiah is supposed to refer to 
it when in the nineteenth chapter of his prophecy 
he says: "In that day shall there be an altar to 
the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a 
pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it 
shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord 
of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they shall cry 
unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he 
shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and 
he shall deliver them." 

This remarkable structure covers thirteen acres, 
and its slant height reaching to an apex is more 
than five hundred feet. It is still a problem to 
architects to know how this massive pile was con- 
structed, for it is known that the quarries were 
many miles distant. Multitudes of workmen 
must have been engaged for an indefinite time; 



MONUMENTS 125 

and without steam and modern appliances they 
were able to lift the heaviest blocks of stone and 
granite. It seems to have rendered a double pur- 
pose. Its grand gallery would appear to indicate 
that provision for a telescope had entered into its 
construction and had been used for astronomical 
observations, and after the death of the builder it 
was to serve as a tomb for himself and his queen, 
as there are two chambers deep in the heart of 
the structure, in one of which there still remains a 
sarcophagus. 

The most exquisite memorial in the world is the 
Taj Mahal, in Agra, India. It was built in 1629 
as a mausoleum by the Shah Jehan, in memory of 
his favorite wife, at the fabulous cost of $50,000,- 
000. It is constructed of white marble and is em- 
bellished with numberless delicate and intricate 
designs; and justifies, indeed, the definition of 
some rapturous poet that such "architecture is 
frozen music." 

The word "monument" is derived from the 
Latin "monere" which means to warn and to ad- 
monish. Nations erect monuments to the mem- 
ory of men who have become the incarnation of 
the ideals of a generation. Every great man is a 
resultant. As the mountains rest upon the foot- 
hills, so do great men depend for their lofty 
stature upon the multitudes of humble men upon 
whose shoulders they stand. A man becomes 
great when he is able to incorporate in himself and 
in his actions and utterances the dreams and 



126 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

visions of those who have preceded him and are 
contemporaneous with him. A man is great when 
he becomes the spokesman of a mighty truth which 
the multitudes are feeling and believing. 

All great reforms commence with the common 
people, among the humble and unknown. The 
pioneer comes out of the lower strata of society. 
At first he is ridiculed and often put to death, but 
the truth for which he suffers survives him, and 
some one else seizes the torch from his faltering 
hand; but the John Browns and the Lovejoys and 
the Garrisons are always followed by the Wilber- 
forces and the Lincolns. The pioneers do not 
usually have the monuments — the humble people 
are forgotten; but when the monuments are un- 
veiled to the Lincolns, and the praises of the Lin- 
colns are being sung throughout the land, the true 
student of events knows that as the greater always 
includes the lesser, so every word spoken or sung 
in praise of the Lincolns is a word of acknowledg- 
ment and appreciation of the Garrisons and the 
Lovejoys and the John Browns, without whom the 
Lincolns would have been impossible. 

Any man who is to-day valiantly defending his 
convictions and ideals, however humble he may 
be, is contributing his modest part to a condition 
which later will find expression and crystalliza- 
tion in some man or group of men who will carry 
these ideals and convictions to their inevitable 
and glorious fruition. We call a man a great man 
and build a monument to his memory when he has 



MONUMENTS 127 

gathered into his own heart and life and person- 
ality the ideals of his age. 

That is, therefore, the true meaning of Wash- 
ington's Monument in Washington, D. C; of the 
Faith monument at Plymouth; of the Pillar at 
Bunker Hill; of Grant's Tomb on the Hudson; of 
the glistening memorials to Lee and Jefferson 
Davis in Richmond; of General Jackson in New 
Orleans; of Daniel Webster in Washington; of 
Lincoln at Springfield; of Farragut in Madison 
Square and of General Sherman in Central Park, 
New York; of St. Gaudens's bas-relief of Robert 
Gould Shaw in Boston, and of Frances Willard in 
the nation's capital. 

There are three notable monuments to very 
humble women in the world. One is in New 
Orleans. It is a monument to Margaret. She 
was a baker and she is represented in the marble 
as sitting in her old fashioned rocking-chair. She 
always maintained her humble dress and manners 
and methods of living. She amassed a fortune, 
all of which was left to the orphans of New 
Orleans. 

In Edinburgh, Scotland, is a beautiful testi- 
monial to Catharine St. Clair. She served the 
poor and never dreamed that she was great. After 
a life of unselfish devotion she went up to her coro- 
nation, and a grateful people erected a monument 
to her memory, and no one was permitted to give 
more than a six-pence. 

The other of these three monuments is to 



128 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Mary Jones. It stands in the midst of the ruins 
of the cottage in which she lived in Wales, and 
bears the inscription: "In memory of Mary Jones, 
who in the year 1800 at the age of 18 walked from 
here to Belo to procure a copy of a Welsh Bible. 
This incident was the occasion of the organiza- 
tion of the British and Foreign Bible Society." 
This monument was erected by the Sunday 
school scholars. You will remember that this 
little girl found after her long journey that there 
were no more Bibles for distribution, and re- 
turned sadly to her home. 

On September 30, 1907, the McKinley Mauso- 
leum was dedicated at Canton, Ohio, with im- 
posing ceremonies. Over one million people con- 
tributed to the six hundred thousand dollars 
which was the cost of this beautiful memorial. 
It bears two inscriptions, one of which is taken 
from his last speech in Buffalo: 

"Let us ever remember that our interest is in 
concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence 
rests in the victories of peace, not those of war." 

The other inscription is as follows: 

"Wm. McKinley, President of the United 
States; a statesman, singularly gifted to unite 
the discordant forces of government, and mould 
the diverse purposes of men toward progressive 
and salutary action; a magistrate whose poise of 
judgment was tested and vindicated in a succes- 
sion of national emergencies; a good citizen, brave 
soldier, wise executive, helper and leader of men, 



MONUMENTS 129 

exemplar to his people of the virtues that build 
and conserve the state, society, and the home." 

There is another kind of monument far more 
important than these which are constructed of 
granite and bronze, and referred to by our Lord 
when he said of Mary: "This that she hath done 
shall be spoken of as a memorial of her." It is 
the monument of deeds. 

"Go put your creed into your deeds," said 
Emerson; and Horace in one of his immortal odes 
sang: 

"I've reared a monument alone 
More durable than brass or stone, 
Whose cloudy summit is more hid 
Than regal height of pyramid — 
I shall not surely die!" 

Deeds build imperishable monuments. Un- 
merited monuments will fall sooner or later into 
ruins; and what is more pathetic than a monu- 
ment which has survived the memory of the 
name upon it? Pliny the Younger wrote: "The 
erection of a monument is superfluous; the memory 
of us will last if we have deserved it in our lives." 

When one has spent several hours in Saint 
Paul's magnificent minster in London, and with 
increasing wonder has honored the noble skill 
of the great architect who suspended this massive 
dome between heaven and earth, his admiration 
for the modest builder will substantially increase 
when far down in the floor of the crypt of the 
cathedral, upon a slab under his feet, he finds 



130 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the name of Christopher Wren and the simple 
inscription over his dust, "Si Monumentum 
requiris circwnspice" — "If you would seek his 
monument, look about you." 

In these after-war days, when monuments are 
being projected and erected to commemorate the 
valor of American soldiers, we may recall the 
remark of Napoleon, "Brave deeds are the mon- 
uments of brave men." 

If a man's deeds are not his greatest monument, 
then no pillar of granite can give him true immor- 
tality. We are immortal till our work is done; 
and a man's work is not done so long as the influ- 
ence of his deeds abides. 

"Virtue alone outbuilds the pyramids, 
Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall." 

Contrast with the monuments of noble deeds 
those monuments which men build for themselves 
because they are sure their fellow men will never 
give them such recognition. Such monuments 
are not honored memorials, but danger signals 
placed upon the edges of the dizzy precipices of 
vanity and egotism. Such monuments will al- 
ways be treated with contemptuous disregard. 
There is such a monument in a beautiful cemetery 
in Oakland, California. It was built by a rich 
egotist before he died, and it is a dismal reminder 
to all who pass by of the inordinate self-adoration 
of a weak and vain creature. 

A grateful posterity will not forget its true bene- 



MONUMENTS 131 

factors, and a discriminating posterity will not 
remember unworthy ancestors, though their names 
and figures should be carved out of granite moun- 
tains. The wise Cato said, "I would rather men 
would ask why my statue is not set up than why 
it is." Indeed, reading and observation make it 
evident that those who do not feel themselves 
worthy of monuments are those whose memory is 
kept green by a grateful future. 

In Geneva, Switzerland, is a colossal equestrian 
statue of the Duke of Burgundy, who condi- 
tioned large gifts to the city provided the citizens 
should erect this very ostentatious monument. 
Not far away in a modest graveyard is a plain slab 
marked "J. C." Here lies the dust of John Cal- 
vin, the great Swiss reformer and theologian, and 
one of the heroic builders of the Christian Church. 
Deeds, noble deeds were Calvin's greatest me- 
morials. 

How often God makes the wrath of men to 
praise him is forcibly illustrated in the little town 
of Aosta in a valley of Switzerland in sight of 
Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. Here Calvin 
failed to establish the theocratic government which 
five years later was in successful operation in 
Geneva. And, in passing, let us remind our- 
selves that our fathers borrowed many of the 
ideas of our American republic from the successful 
experiments of John Calvin in his republic in 
Geneva. In this town of Aosta, in the middle of 
a narrow thoroughfare, his implacable enemies 



132 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

placed a small monument which bears the strange 
inscription that it was erected to commemorate 
the failure of John Calvin to introduce Protes- 
tantism into Italy. They crowded Calvin out of 
Aosta as his bitter foes drove Jesus out of Caper- 
naum; and as Capernaum is in ignominious ruins 
to-day so would Aosta be unknown save as it is 
associated with the mistreatment of the great 
reformer. 

There is another monument, however, to Calvin 
in Aosta. It is unique and perhaps the most pic- 
turesque in the world. There is an uncomfort- 
able wind that blows in the valley of Aosta every 
day, rising regularly at eleven o'clock and lasting 
until four in the afternoon. Four hundred years 
ago the people, to disparage the great teacher 
whom they would not receive, called it "Calvin's 
wind." This strange ethereal and invisible me- 
morial has lasted through these hurrying centuries; 
and by a singular irony of fate will continue as 
long as the valley of Aosta is populated, to per- 
petuate the name and memory of a man whose dis- 
dainful contemporaries sought to consign to early 
contumely and everlasting oblivion. This is a 
half-facetious application of an old adage, "The 
winds and the waves are always on the side of the 
ablest navigators." 

Deeds are the only enduring memorials. Deeds ! 
Deeds! A deed begun is half-done. 

A few years ago 1 a letter appeared in the Century 

'December, 1886. 



MONUMENTS 133 

Magazine from E. W. Whitney complaining that 
the nation had never erected a monument to his 
illustrious father, who had invented the cotton-gin. 
The son need not suffer alarm. Eli Whitney has 
an imperishable name more enduring than a statue 
of bronze. He was one of the greatest benefac- 
tors of the South. By his machine instead of one 
pound of cotton a day by hand, fifty pounds could 
be cleaned. His invention enriched England and 
made the South financially and commercially. 

The great historian Macaulay wrote: "What 
Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli 
Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin has more 
than equaled in its relation to the power and the 
progress of the United States." For instance, in 
1790 thirty millions pounds of raw cotton were 
sent to England, while in 1860, seventy years 
later, one thousand million pounds were shipped. 
In 1790 a field-hand slave was worth only two 
hundred and fifty dollars, and in 1860 he was 
worth one thousand six hundred dollars. 

I have no objection to some material monument 
to Eli Whitney, but his place is forever assured in 
memorials of gratitude which are permanent and 
imperishable. 

At the close of the Civil War General Armstrong 
was placed in charge of a company of Negroes who 
were contrabands of war, and he began to teach 
these colored people how to work out their own 
salvation. It was a prodigious task. He was 
laughed at by the whites and execrated by the 



134 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

blacks; but on he went, taking as his motto, 
"Doing what cannot be done is the glory of living." 
He died of overwork all too soon, and in his diary 
were found the words: "I have never known what 
self-sacrifice means." One day a raw-boned but 
industrious Negro lad came to Hampton and fell 
under the influence of this great man; and General 
Armstrong lived again in the notable career of 
Booker T. Washington. 

On one of America's historic battlefields is an 
imposing monument standing near the point of 
surrender, and rising to a height of nearly two 
hundred feet. A mile away the beautiful, deep- 
blue Hudson flows majestically toward the sea, 
and all about the massive granite pile lies the his- 
toric battlefield. To be sure, "the smoke that 
hung upon the hills of Saratoga's battlefield on 
that sad, autumn day has lifted long ago and 
healing grasses grow in those deep gashes cut by 
shot and cannon balls. Now the wild plum 
blooms on those green hills and robins sing their 
roundelays among the apple boughs. The grass is 
fresh with summer rain and wild flowers bloom in 
that same soil which was wet with human blood." 1 

From the monument comes a most striking and 
impressive lesson. Just above the entrances on 
the four sides of the monument are four niches 
provided for fine bronze statues of heroic size of 
the victors of that memorable battle of Saratoga. 
In the niche facing the east is the statue of General 

1 Charles Coke Woods. 



MONUMENTS 135 

Philip Schuyler — Schuyler, of whom it has been 
said that "General Gates never would have cap- 
tured Burgoyne had he not followed the plans of 
General Schuyler and taken his advice." Looking 
toward the west is General Daniel Morgan, and 
facing the north is General Horatio Gates. 

There is a fourth niche facing the south, but it 
is empty. It should have been occupied by one 
whose brilliant deeds helped to make the victory 
at Saratoga possible. Indeed, the niche faces the 
scenes of his most heroic achievements. But the 
niche is empty, "save as spiders spin their tangled 
webs among its sullen shadows" — empty because 
one of the heroes of Saratoga later became a 
betrayer of his country. The brave soldier who 
was nearly fatally wounded at Saratoga lived to 
strike a remorseless blow at his country's weal, 
and Benedict Arnold's niche is forever unoccupied. 

It is possible for men who have nobly achieved 
to come to some sad, subsequent day when sonie 
one deed of vengeance or of vice shall with dis- 
graceful blot stain back through all the leaves of 
life already turned. 

As one stands before the empty niche at Sara- 
toga its message sinks deep into the heart. What 
a man does can never be any better than what a 
man is. And must we not be increasingly on our 
guard against the temptations which assail the 
man who has already enjoyed some of life's suc- 
cesses? And it must not be forgotten that any 
vantage ground of fulfilled ambitions does not 



136 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

make safe any dalliance with evil in any of its 
insidious forms. And likewise it must be remem- 
bered that certain fearful temptations will come 
to men in middle life which did not assail them 
in their earlier years. Never in youth or in ma- 
turity must there be an instant's truce between 
virtue and vice. 

"We are building every day, 
In a good or evil way, 
And the structure as it grows 
Must our inmost self disclose, 
Till in every arch and line 
All our hidden faults outshine. 

"Do you ask what building this 
That can show both pain and bliss, 
That can be both dark and fair? 
Lo! its name is Character. 
Build it well, whate'er you do! 
Build it straight and strong and true, 
Build it clean and high and broad, 
Build it for the eye of God." 1 

When Ole Bull, the great Norwegian violinist, 
was in this country he was assailed by much 
hostile criticism. Mr. James Gordon Bennett 
offered him the columns of the New York Herald 
to reply to his traducers. In broken English, he 
thanked the editor, saying, "I tink, Mr. Bennett, 
it is best tey writes against me, and I play against 
tern." 

Deeds! Deeds! Our work is our best defense. 
If we bring things to pass, our enemies are soon 

1 James Buckbam. 



MONUMENTS 137 

defeated. "Christ never wrote a tract, but he 
went about doing good." 1 

The most exquisite structure in the United 
States is the Congressional Library in Washing- 
ton, D. C. When an Indian from the Western 
plains gazed upon its storied splendor and dazzling 
interior, he reverently asked, "Made by man?" 
And they answered him, 

"The hand of man hath builded, 

But behind was the heart of God." 

Deeds! Deeds! A boy from Eton school went 
over to London and was appalled by the squalor 
and misery which everywhere abounded. His 
heart went out especially for the poor unfor- 
tunate boys. He went down under London 
Bridge, and with him went two wharf-rats as his 
first scholars. He got a barrel, and a board, and 
a couple of candles, and some old books, and 
started his first night school. And to-day Quin- 
ton Hogg's polytechnic schools are all over Great 
Britain, and in her distant colonies as well, and 
armies of men are praising the name and holding 
sacred the memory of a man of heart and deeds. 

An atheist who spent a few days with the holy 
Fenelon said, "If I stay here much longer, I shall 
be a Christian in spite of myself," and yet the 
saintly man had not spoken a word of solicitation. 
A great man said, "I tried to be a skeptic when 
a young man, but my mother's life was too 
much for me." 

1 Horace Mann. 



VIII 
THE NEW GENTLENESS 



His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen. — Dryden. 

And thus he bore without abuse 
The grand old name of gentleman. 

— Tennyson. 

His life was gentle, and the elements 
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, "This was a man!" 

— Shakespeare. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW GENTLENESS 

"Thy gentleness hath made me great" are not 
the words of an exquisitely beautiful woman like 
the mother of Samuel, or of the sweet Virgin 
Mother of Nazareth, whose divine gentleness had 
made them great in the sight of God and man, 
but they are the soul outburst of a mighty vic- 
torious warrior, the Grant or Foeh of Israel, even 
so far away as a thousand years before Bethle- 
hem's star twinkled above the wondering shep- 
herds. 

It is told in the records of the history of Israel, 
according to the Second Book of Samuel, that the 
Philistines, the long-time enemies of Israel, who 
had been often defeated but never exterminated, 
"had yet war again" with the hosts of the Most 
High. In this battle not only was the army of 
Philistia led forth by one giant as when David, 
when only a shepherd boy, vanquished the gar- 
rulous giant of Gath, but in this conflict even 
four mighty giants, one of whom was "the brother 
of Goliath the Gittite," with fiendish vengeance 
"defied Israel"; but these haughty giants one and 
all "fell by the hand of David and by the hand of 
his servants." 

After the overwhelming victory David's grate- 
141 



142 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

ful soul broke forth in a tumultuous song of 
thanksgiving, which as never before we now 
appreciate, because we too are seeking to ade- 
quately express our gratitude to the Almighty 
Father for victories in battle which he vouch- 
safed to those who fought for God and humanity. 

This outburst of praiseful melody is found not 
only in the historic setting in Samuel, but appears 
also in the collection of songs known as "The 
Psalms." They are identical except for a few 
unimportant verbal discrepancies. 

It is a magnificent triumphant ode which 
reaches the dimensions of real grandeur — an im- 
passioned and divinely inspired anthem of pro- 
phetic praise; a successful effort of a soul full of 
rapture to magnify the great and mighty Jehovah. 
It finds a beautiful antithesis in the Magnificat 
of the radiant Virgin Mother when she sang, ex- 
ultingly, "My soul doth magnify the Lord!" 

There are many striking and artistic lines in 
this masterpiece of the Warrior Poet, such as: 

"The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and 
my deliverer." 

"He rode upon a cherub, and did fly; 
Yea, he flew swiftly upon the wings of the 
wind." 

"He brought me forth also into a large place." 

"For by thee I have run through a troop; 
And by my God do I leap over a wall." 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 143 

In the midst of these majestic strains there is a 
soft refrain which sings itself into our memory 
and awakens our ever increasing wonder: "And 
thy gentleness hath made me great." That is, 
great, not in his own humble sight, nor before 
the Mighty God and the Everlasting Father, but 
great in the eyes of men who have beheld his 
triumphant victory. 

But our profound interest gathers about that 
marvelous word, which to even pronounce it — 
"gentleness" — exorcises from our spirits, and even 
from our voices, all harshness and discord: 
"Gentle" — "gentleness" — "Thy gentleness hath 
made me great." 

What is this mystic, divine quality which be- 
longs to God and which when passed over to man 
makes him useful, and happy, and victorious as 
he fares forth to fight the battles of justice and 
truth and righteousness? 

None of the versions of the Scriptures are 
willing to displace this word of rhythm and of 
beauty. Like the word "charity" — "the greatest 
of these is charity" — it belongs unchanged to the 
vocabulary of true greatness. "With thy meek- 
ness thou hast multiplied me." We may seek 
their synonyms and define gentleness as meek- 
ness, or condescension, or clemency, or kindness, 
and charity as love, and dearness, but at the last 
we come back and find our fullest satisfaction in 
the words themselves, "gentleness" — "charity." 

The completest definition of gentleness is found 



144 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

in the Man of Galilee — the Son of Mary and of 
God — "Earth's first gentleman," Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth. 

Gentleness is meekness, but meekness is not 
weakness; it is strength. Is not gentleness strength 
controlled? Moses, we were taught in our child- 
hood's catechism, was the meekest of men, but 
was ever a leader and administrator so virile 
and brave as was he; able to control the raging 
passions of men, and in the blazing glory of 
shaking Sinai to look even into the face of God! 
A man of mightiest mentality, of stalwart figure, 
of unswerving fidelity — a man of vigorous per- 
sonality, so human, so divine that no other man 
has ever been so trusted with such sacred and 
profound secrets of God — and yet among the 
ancient humans he was the apotheosis of gentle- 
ness. 

Gentleness in women, a sweet repose and seren- 
ity, as Montaigne says, "is paramount to every- 
thing else in woman." A masculine woman, with 
harsh voice and manner, is so anomalous and dis- 
tasteful that it awakens the resentment, if not 
the pity, of the gallant man who is given to 
idealizing all women. Woman's most convincing 
and persuasive possession is gentleness. A bril- 
liant woman says, "Fearless gentleness is the 
most beautiful of feminine attractions born of 
modesty and love." In woman the final conquest 
is to gentleness. Women would have had their 
suffrage rights long ago if the early champions 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 145 

of her political recognition could have been 
gentlewomen. Coarse, mannish women did not 
ingratiate the just cause which they represented. 
After all, personality is the most powerful ele- 
ment in any argument. Gracious Frances Willard 
did more to bring about a right appreciation of 
what should be woman's social and political 
status than scores of ranting and vociferous 
women with masculine stride and gesture and 
vocalization, because she was the gentle, and cul- 
tured, and always tastefully attired prophetess of 
a new day for gentlewomanhood. 

And, if anyone were able to analyze that in- 
definable splendor which makes the mother 
unique and the most divine of all human beings, 
he would linger long on the quality of gentleness 
which must belong to the purest of God's celes- 
tial beings. 

Gentleness as a quality of true manliness has 
not always been looked for in men. It has been 
customary to talk about men as wise and strong 
and brave. So far as I can now remember none 
of the great Greeks or Romans magnified gentle- 
ness as a necessity to complete manhood; but 
with Christianity there came a new ideal of the 
virile and valiant man: "A Christian, a true Chris- 
tian, is God Almighty's gentleman." 

In a man gentleness is the complete control of 
strong and sterling characteristics. Gentleness is 
character with a safety device. The perfection 
of a sixty-horse-power engine is quietness — 



146 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

gentleness. Gentleness in a Corliss engine or an 
automobile is not the absence of power but the 
absolute control of mighty forces which, unmas- 
tered, could tear, explode, and kill. In woman it 
should be the wisdom of gentleness, in man the 
gentleness of wisdom; in woman the courage of 
gentleness, in man the gentleness of courage; in 
woman the virility of gentleness, in man the 
gentleness of virility; in woman the faith, the 
hope, the love of gentleness, in man the gentle- 
ness of faith and hope and love. The difference 
between men and women is not in quality but in 
the accent. Man must especially accentuate the 
field, the chase, the forum, the sword, the pen; 
woman, the cradle, the fireside, the family altar, 
the holiest emotions of the soul. 

Just as woman came in all her glorious po- 
tentialities into the world when Jesus came, so 
it is true that the world was four thousand years 
old also before man came to his holiest estate. 
Who is this peasant Prophet who dares to say 
that "the meek shall inherit the earth" in the 
face of the ever-present fact that it was Roman 
might that was avowedly declaring, "I have the 
right to do what I have the might to do," and 
that had practically subjugated the whole civil- 
ized world? And when we have carefully analyzed 
the forces which operated in the decline and fall 
of the Roman empire, and the decline and fall of 
mediaeval ecclesiasticism, and the decline and fall 
of the empire of Napoleon, and the decline and 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 147 

fall of the base institution of human slavery, and 
the decline and fall of the unspeakable Turk, and 
the infinitely more unspeakable Hohenzollern; and 
the decline and fall of the Hapsburgs and the 
Romanoffs, and the decline and fall of the bestial 
absolutism of King Alcohol, with wonder and 
praise we will gratefully acknowledge that all of 
these forces have gone down, and will, with other 
inimical influences, continue to go down before 
the advancing steps of the Prince of Peace, whose 
nature is meekness and whose scepter is love. 

Henry Drummond, the refined Scottish gentle- 
man and Christian, to whom, when her husband 
was dying, a plain artisan woman felt at liberty 
to send the message, "Will you not come to see 
my husband? I want him to have a breath of 
you aboot him before he dies," Henry Drummond, 
this man of atmosphere and power, in recalling 
the influences which awakened his noblest self 
within him, says that "Ruskin taught him to 
use his eyes; that Emerson taught him to see 
with his mind; that Channing taught him to be- 
lieve in God; that Robertson of Brighton taught 
him that God was human. Yet all of them to- 
gether could not teach Drummond the art of life. 
Passing by all transcripts, however opulent and 
luminous, he sought out original sources for him- 
self. And behold, he learned life from Christ, 
in Christ, through Christ, and Christ only. Bor- 
rowing the words of Henry Ward Beecher, Drum- 
mond says: 'My hidden ideals of what is beautiful 



148 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

I have drawn from Christ. My thoughts of what 
is manly, and noble, and pure have almost all 
of them arisen from the Lord Jesus Christ.' ' n 

Yes, Christ is the All-Highest, the incomparable 
Son of God and Son of man, and no one can 
follow Thomas a Kempis, or Francis of Assisi, or 
Bernard of Clairvaux, or John Hus, or Peter Waldo, 
or John Wesley, in his " Imitation of Christ" 
without coming into the possession of a consum- 
mate gentleness. 

Nothing can be more gentle than the beams 
that shine from the face of the sun or drop out 
of the light treasures of the moon, and yet sun- 
beams slip the icy bolts of winter and bedeck a 
barren earth with beauty, and moonlight, in 
some mysterious way, controls the tides of the 
sea and maintains the equilibrium of the earth- 
universe. Nothing is more subtle or more quiet 
than gravity, and yet its realm is universal and 
all must bow to its inexorable scepter. 

Gentleness includes sympathy, kindness, cul- 
ture, quietness, deference, modesty, but none the 
less is gentleness courageous, tenacious, wise, 
virile, and sometimes righteously indignant with 
evil. There is no force mightier among men for 
truth and justice than when gentleness with holy 
anger drives the impertinent trespassers from the 
sacred precincts of God's holy purposes. A furi- 
ous gentleness is sometimes necessary to expel the 
disobedient from the Edens of earth, the dese- 

1 Rev. F. F. Shannon. 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 149 

crators from the temples of worship, and the 
Kaiser libertines from the abodes of men. 

God gives to man a gentle woman for his mother 
because God wants a man to possess the gentleness 
of a woman along with the native virility of the 
man — a gentle virility. God gives a woman a 
virile man for a father because he wants the per- 
fect woman to possess a virile gentleness. When 
God has his way every man will be a gentleman. 

Much of the discontent in married life is due to 
the absence on the part of the man of that gentle- 
ness without which in the courtship he could never 
have won the fair girl's heart and hand. I once 
heard a woman explain why she never forsook her 
husband during a period of years in which he 
drank too freely. She said that no matter how 
intoxicated, he was never rude or discourteous to 
her. By and by, with her help, he was able to 
break the chain of alcoholic slavery. He was a 
born gentleman, and even strong drink could not 
seize the scepter from him. 

Wars of violence and aggression must go be- 
cause gentleness has a better way. All vice and 
avarice must go because they are incompatible 
with gentleness. All bitter rivalries must dis- 
appear because to gentleness belong brotherly 
kindness and charity, and gentleness emphasizes 
the precept, "In honor preferring one another." 

It is true that only those who possess strength 
can possess gentleness, for if a person have gentle- 
ness without strength his gentleness is merely 



150 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

weakness. Have you noticed the influence ex- 
erted by a real gentleman when he comes into the 
presence of men who are coarse and even profane? 
True gentleness is not condescending and patron- 
izing, it is dignity and humility so combined as to 
make the gentleman approachable and engaging. 

"There are some spirits nobly just, unwarped by pelf or pride, 
Great in the calm, but greater still when dashed by adverse 

tide; 
They hold the rank no king can give, no station can disgrace; 
Nature puts forth her gentle man, and monarchs must give 

place." 1 

The gentleman is the very highest product of the 
art of manliness. As Emerson well says, "The 
flowering of civilization is the finished man, the 
man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of 
social power — the gentleman." I have met men 
to whom I never revert in memory without feel- 
ing my emotions of true manliness stimulated. 

I wonder if gentlemanliness is not a native 
quality of the true American. All over Europe, 
in England, in France, in Italy, the praises of the 
American soldier are on the lips of all, and uni- 
formly there is a reference to the unusual courtesy 
and kindness of Uncle Sam's boys at the front. A 
French Cabinet minister, in referring to these 
gracious qualities in the American army, said, 
"The Americans have saved Paris, and they have 
done it as if we did them a favor in permitting it." 
I am glad to believe that the politeness of the 
American soldier in France is not an artificiality 

i Eliza Cook. 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 151 

which he removes as he does his helmet or his 
puttees, but it is an innate quality which he has 
inherited from his English and French ancestry, 
and which in the transmission has lost nothing of 
its former glory. 

The most kingly possession of kings is gentle- 
ness. Every empire in the world's history which 
has been founded on force has disappeared, and 
the most tragic application of this principle is 
seen in the empire of William II, which, after 
forty-eight elusive years, is rapidly going into 
oblivion. The most prosperous and eventful 
reign in all the long and renowned history of 
Great Britain was when that true woman, Queen 
Victoria, sat upon the throne and had for her chief 
adviser her own husband, one of the finest types 
of the real gentleman which European history has 
produced. 

Who do you think is the best-loved ruler in 
Europe to-day? I am sure King George and King 
Albert of Belgium have the hearts of their people, 
and I do not personally know who is better loved 
than they, but I have been much impressed with 
the claim made by a brilliant Italian that Victor 
Emmanuel III is "undoubtedly the most beloved 
ruler in Europe" to-day. The King of Italy in- 
sists that he "does not rule — he reigns." 

Unless I am mistaken in my impressions of this 
noble king, gentleness is his most conspicuous and 
ingratiating quality. All during the fearful war 
he spent most of the time with his brave heroes at 



152 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

the battle front. He was a familiar figure in the 
hospitals and the trenches, and has more often 
messed with the men in their rude quarters than 
with the officers. 

A loyal Italian subject convalescing from a 
battle wound ecstatically tells this fine story of his 
king. He says: 

"I saw it with my own eyes. We were having 
our rancio, and the king came up and looked 
around to see that everything was in order. Then 
he noticed a territorial soldier, much older than 
the rest of us, sitting apart without touching his 
food and looking very sad. The king walked up 
to him and said, simple-like: 'Are you sick, or do 
you not like the rantioV to both of which ques- 
tions the soldier shook his head. Then his Majes- 
ty asks, 'What ails you, my son?' and the man 
answers so he could hardly keep back the tears: 
'Sire, when I left home one of my three children 
was very ill. I've had no news about him for 
nearly a month.' Now, could you guess what the 
king of Italy then said? Well, these are his 
words: 'I understand your worry; the thought of 
our children never leaves us, does it? But you 
should not waste yourself with anxiety simply 
because no letters have come; it's a week that I 
don't hear from home either, and I'm a father — 
with a good promising son too' — would you believe 
it? And then and there the king called one of 
his aides, ordered him to take the name and ad- 
dress of the family of the territorial, and to tele- 



THE NEW GENTLENESS 153 

graph them at once in the king's name for news of 
the little boy." 

Truly it can be said of King Victor Emmanuel 
as of David of old, "Thy gentleness hath made 
me great." All over Italy the people are shouting 
"Viva il Re! Viva il Re!"— "Long live the King! 
Long live the King!" 

Another story is told of an Italian captain and his 
orderly who went to examine a battery which in 
a little while was to be inspected by the king. 1 
Unexpectedly the Austrian's guns got the range 
and in a few moments they were in the midst 
of a lively fire. A shrapnel ball hit the captain 
who, as he fell, shouted to the orderly to run 
and save himself. Even the artillery men got 
in a panic and ran back, not even regarding the 
king's motor, which was moving up toward the 
front. The orderly refused to leave his officer, 
but tried to staunch the blood which was flowing 
freely from the wound; but the brave captain's 
life was soon gone out, and the orderly was heart- 
broken and excited to see the men running away; 
and hearing the king's motor sounding farther 
and farther away, he threw himself over the body 
of his dead captain, and moaned, "Even the king 
leaves us." He had hardly uttered the words 
when some one touched him on the shoulder, and, 
turning around, he saw the king himself standing 
before him as quietly as if there were no shells 
bursting on every side. The orderly arose, sa- 

i "Viva il Re!" by Gino C. Speranza, The Outlook, November 27, 1918. 



154 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

luted, and stood at attention, trembling with fear, 
when the king said to him, "My son, the auto- 
mobile has gone, but the king remains with his 
soldiers." They sat down together and in the 
midst of the bursting shells waited beside the 
captain's lifeless form until the stretcher-bearers 
came and carried it away. "Viva il Re!" Gen- 
tleness is a kingly virtue, and he only is king who 
serves and loves; and anyone who loves and 
ministers is a prince or princess, no matter what 
may or may not be his royal lineage. 

He who would be chief among us must be the 
servant of all — and service is the measure of true 
greatness — and gentleness is the secret of service; 
and if our humble lives are filled with kindly 
ministries, we may be King's sons and King's 
daughters in the New Day. 

The New Gentleness is the old gentleness anew 
— the gentleness which made Israel's warrior poet 
great in the long ago. 



IX 

THE ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE- 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



"O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of 
thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?"— Micah 6. 8. 

(When visiting in Los Angeles, and asked for his autograph, 
Mr. Roosevelt wrote his name and the above Bible reference, 
and said that this was his favorite verse of Scripture.) 

Any man who says he is an American, but something else 
also — he is not an American at all. We have room for but 
one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag. — 

Roosevelt. 

In my judgment, no man in the history of America, not even 
Abraham Lincoln, did so much as Theodore Roosevelt to ex- 
pedite the era of self-government. — Lyman Abbott. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE- 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

One cannot make a study of the development 
and achievements of great men without feeling 
that the greatest thing in God's great world is 
not a towering mountain, nor a rolling sea, nor a 
sparkling jewel, nor a teeming city, nor a conquer- 
ing army, nor an immortal poem, nor a transcend- 
ent philosophy, but far and away the greatest of 
all earthly products is a good and true man. 

And no marvels are so enthralling as the manner 
in which a good heavenly Father can build his 
tallest souls out of humblest material. Not only, 
as in the olden times, is it the world's greatest law- 
giver out of a waif in a cradle in the Nile; and the 
mightiest warrior poet of his age from the lone- 
some isolation of a Judaean shepherd boy; and a 
nation's brilliant premier from a captive slave- 
boy providentially saved from a lion's den; and 
the most versatile theologian from a brave lad 
from a distant Tarsan province; and the world's 
incomparable Redeemer from the cattle-stall of a 
Bethlehem peasant's home in a hill; but in the 
succeeding centuries, as the loving scepter of the 
Nazarene Carpenter has been steadily gaining 
ascendency over the heads and hearts of man- 

157 



158 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

kind, it is marvelous and romantic how God 
can take the weak things of the world to con- 
found the mighty. 

Now it is a picturesque man from the desert, 
in the plain garb of a monk, timidly coming to 
the voluptuous city of Rome and hurling himself 
between the brutal gladiators whose thirsty and 
indignant swords quickly drink his blood, but his 
sacrifice puts an end to the pagan atrocities of 
the Coliseum. And again it is a devout hermit 
making his way over hot deserts and inaccessible 
mountains to offer his prayer of adoration at the 
sacred shrines of his Lord's suffering and tri- 
umph; and finding the Holy City defiled by the 
foul desecrations of the unspeakable Saracen, he 
returns to his native land, and stirs all Europe 
to the memorable Crusades. 

It is true that many of the world's greatest 
benefactors have literally had no places to lay 
their heads, but have spent their lives smoothing 
pillows for a suffering and forgotten humanity. 
John Wycliffe, John Hus, Peter Waldo, and 
Girolamo Savonarola all arose from the humblest 
surroundings to positions of honor and ministry, 
beside which knightly crowns are dimmed in 
their splendor and scepters are tarnished. As the 
tallest giants of the forest grow from the lowliest 
acorn, so God in the administration of the King- 
dom often finds the beginnings of real greatness 
in humblest soil. The lad, who in maturity 
rocked the thrones of Europe and rebuked the 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 159 

corruptions of a hierarchy shot through with 
avarice and perfidy, and broke the chains which 
had bound truth to pillars of superstition and 
oppression, was the son of a humble German 
slate-cutter, and by continuous manual labor 
worked his way through the University at Erfurt. 

The greatest uplifting force in the civilization 
of the restless eighteenth century was the product 
of an obscure preacher's home in the parish of 
Epworth, England. The historians vie with 
each other in assigning to John Wesley his place. 
But who would have thought of stopping at the 
humble rectory where eighteen children crowded 
the narrow quarters, if he were seeking for a per- 
sonality which was to awaken Britain and the 
world to a new sense of sin and to new ideals of 
righteousness. 

How fascinating is this Romance of Making 
Men and through them building empires, and 
republics, and the Church of Christ? It was only 
a group of troublesome and inconsequential, but 
consecrated and sincere people who for their re- 
ligious convictions were driven from England, and 
then made unwelcome in Holland; but the pre- 
cious human cargo on the little Mayflower was the 
seed-corn of a new liberty — called to be the Mes- 
siah of the nations — a new incarnation of the 
Spirit of God in an age of freedom of conscience. 

What shall be said of perhaps the most para- 
doxical and puzzling personality in European his- 
tory? She was a child of the peasantry of France, 



160 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

and never able to read and write, always chaste 
and modest in her character, but with a religious 
nature which was deepened by habits of medi- 
tation and secret prayer; and she was moved with 
an ardent patriotism, knowing that the rightful 
Prince, Charles the Dauphin, had remained un- 
crowned because of the presence and encroach- 
ments of a foreign army. She claimed to hear 
heavenly voices which commanded her to bring 
liberty to her people, and went forward at the 
head of a small army and drove out the invaders, 
and saw the successful issue of her ambitions in 
the coronation of Charles in the Cathedral of 
Reims. She was later charged with heresy and 
accused as a witch, and burned at the stake on the 
streets of Rouen, at the instance of the Roman 
Church, to which she belonged and for whose in- 
terests she had successfully led the military ex- 
ploits. Joan of Arc, the beautiful and brave 
liberator of her people, holds a unique place in 
the annals of history. 

The mystery of her mission and personality is 
even now acknowledged by the very brutal ecclesi- 
asticism which put her to death, because only 
twenty-five years after her death, which occurred 
May 30, 1431, it revoked the sentence of disgrace 
by which she had been put to death, and upheld 
the reality of the young woman's divine mission 
and inspiration. With ruthless disregard for the 
fable of papal infallibility, our own generation 
has seen this noble national heroine canonized by 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 161 

the successors of those who murdered her, a decree 
of beatification having been issued in 1908 in her 
behalf. 

How patient God must be with his poor human 
creatures as with childish revenge, impetuosity, 
and frivolity, they play at the game of advancing 
the interests of mankind ! The really greatest men 
and women of the world have been maligned and 
murdered by prejudice, ignorance, and supersti- 
tion. It takes the world a long time to learn that 
while we should be most intolerant of hypocrisy 
and selfishness, as was Jesus when he denounced 
those who were as whited sepulchers filled with 
dead men's bones, we should be most tolerant and 
affectionately respectful of those who differ from 
us in their conscientious convictions and religious 
scruples. In essentials unity, in nonessentials 
charity, and fervent love one for another, should 
be our rule and aim. 

When, in the evolution of the sublime principle 
of personal liberty, a leader must be found who 
could lead a divided nation into the promised land 
of peace, and freedom, and prosperity, it was from 
a log cabin in a Kentucky wilderness that the rail- 
splitter came forth to bear away in his strong arms 
the broken shackles of millions of his human 
brothers and sisters. 

What a mighty force for righteousness the 
humblest of the humble may become when a 
brave heart responds to the impulses of divinity 
and to the sobs of a suffering humanity! God- 



162 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

made men are the men upon whom the pivots of 
history have revolved. Sometimes the pivots 
have been worn out under the friction of stormy 
climaxes, but the epochs have turned, and the 
martyrs have been immortalized. 

In that tragic hour, when in 1859 John Brown 
paid the penalty of his patriotism, John Wilkes 
Booth paraded pompously before the scaffold at 
the head of a company of Virginia militia, and 
there was not a tear of sympathy for the poor vic- 
tim in all the gloating multitude which rejoiced in 
his execution, except in the eyes of a few Negroes; 
and especially was there a prayer and throb of 
sympathy in the heart of the mother whose little 
black baby was kissed by the martyr for liberty 
as he was marched to his death. Only six years 
later the bloody assassin's hand plunged our 
nation into a submerging flood of sorrow; and, to- 
day, while the name of the murderer is spoken 
with contempt and shame, John Brown's soul 
goes marching on and the sublime ideals for which 
he died are enshrined in the hearts of a grateful 
republic. 

If there is anyone who was born in the same 
year with Theodore Roosevelt, and graduated 
from college in the same year, and began his pro- 
fessional or business life about the same time, and 
whose humble life efforts during the last thirty 
years have been paralleled by the prodigious en- 
deavors and colossal achievements of this mighty 
man, he will feel a keen sense of personal bereave- 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 163 

ment that America's most typical leader passed 
away in the very zenith of his extraordinary 
career. The true altitude of this, our great con- 
temporaneous American, and the correct profile 
of his personality and power cannot be fully cal- 
culated until we shall be farther removed from his 
mountainous porportions. 

He was a city boy and a rich man's son, and for 
forty years was a living denial of the asper- 
sion that the sons of prosperity would not be 
equal to the strain and stress of a successful and 
useful life. Just when there was danger that our 
prosperous America would produce a generation 
of emasculated young men who had become soft- 
ened by a pampered indulgence, out stepped a 
big, strong youth, a perfect David in his athletic 
proportions, and with rebuking severity he char- 
acterized as "mollycoddles" those who were losing 
their grip and purpose because of the enervation 
of wealth and ease. This rich man's son could 
break a wild horse like a cowboy and wrestle and 
box with experts. 

If a man would undertake a big task, he must 
have a strong body, and so Roosevelt preached 
the gospel of physical exercise, and the result was 
that in the recent war no armies equaled the 
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, steel-muscled, and 
rich-red-blooded crusaders who crossed the stormy 
Atlantic and helped to drive a murderous militar- 
ism from the earth. 

But this strenuous young American who made 



164 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

his muscles tenacious in the cattle ranges of the 
Northwest had a far higher goal for himself than 
merely to be a sturdy animal. He possessed the 
robust conviction that the Creator gave the human 
animal a head and brain for the purpose of mas- 
tering the available principles of truth; and from 
the beginning of his public career he was a vora- 
cious reader and student, and a voluminous writer, 
and a ready speaker. Intellectually, Theodore 
Roosevelt was the most versatile man in public 
life. He knew the habitats and habits of insects 
and animals, and became an authority in natural 
history. He threaded tropical forests for remote 
specimens of life; and when in South America he 
sent back to the curator of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution in Washington a rare species of moth be- 
cause he knew that the museum did not contain 
it in a vast collection. He was a mighty Nimrod, 
but his hunting expeditions were not for sport 
merely but were postgraduate scientific studies. 

He had a masterful acquaintance with science 
in many of its complex ramifications and he was a 
diligent student of biography and history; and 
was intimately acquainted with all the trends, 
epochs, climaxes, and complications of human 
events. As an essayist, author and book reviewer 
he had few, if any, superiors. In his strong body 
he had a virile, alert, keen, penetrating, versatile 
mind, which was under a high state of persistent 
cultivation. 

But Theodore Roosevelt had ideals, and his 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 165 

manliness compelled him to fight for them. In 
defending his political convictions he became a 
statesman. He was a thorn in the flesh to the un- 
principled politician — he made himself a nuisance 
to the leaders of his party in New York because of 
his abrupt demands for honor and frankness; and 
to get him out of the way as a formidable candi- 
date for future position he was deliberately buried, 
as it was planned and supposed, in the Vice-Presi- 
dency. The schemes of his political opponents 
proved the short-cut to greatness and power. 
Roosevelt's convictions made him a reformer, but 
he was one of the prophets whom the missiles of 
his enemies did not undo. 

He was a fighter, not because he loved a skir- 
mish or a battle, but because he was a defender of 
his faith and convictions. Convictions are some 
of God's thoughts which a man can comprehend, 
and a man who has real convictions feels himself 
responsible for his sacred custodianship. With 
his ideals he also had moral integrity, and his high 
moral altitude did not permit him to remain 
silent when his ideals were maligned or assailed. 

In all his public utterances he was more the 
preacher than the politician. He was always talk- 
ing about the victory of the right in the long run. 
He was no temporizer, or trimmer, or timeserver. 
He thought in straight lines, and he went after the 
enemies of the public good just as a man would 
leap upon a base intruder who would harm his 
wife or his daughter. He was always vehement. 



166 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

As one has said, "He shot mosquitoes and battle- 
ships with the same gun." He was always like a 
refreshing breeze. There was a breath of purity 
about him, and the atmosphere was soon cleared 
when he appeared. 

His convictions were so clear and ready and 
dynamic that he was impatient with delay. He 
felt justified in sharply criticising the adminis- 
tration for its dilatoriness in getting into the war, 
with which position many Americans sympathized. 

After the world war had been going on for a 
year or two and America was humbled and in- 
sulted again and again by an arrogant Kaiserism, 
his book came out, entitled, "Fear God and Take 
Your Own Part." It created a tremendous sen- 
sation and was a well-directed blow against an in- 
sidious and immoral pacifism. Those who were 
always opposed to neutrality were glad to have 
this big chevalier of justice and truth say: "While 
we sit idly by while Belgium is being overwhelmed, 
and, rolling up our eyes, prattle with unctuous self- 
righteousness about the duty of neutrality, we 
show that we do not really fear God; on the con- 
trary, we show an odious fear of the devil, and a 
mean readiness to serve him." 1 And again he 
wrote: "A flabby cosmopolitanism, especially if 
it expresses itself through a flabby pacifism, is 
not only silly, it is degrading. It represents 
national emasculation." 2 

1 "Fear God and Take Your Own Part," by Theodore Roosevelt. Copyright, 
1916, by George H. Doran Co., Publishers. 
'Ibid. 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 167 

Mr. Roosevelt's character was re-enforced by a 
morality of such a noble type that he had the 
courage and virility of his convictions. It was his 
moral courage which made him a colonel in the 
Spanish-American War and the victorious leader 
of his picturesque Rough Riders; and was it not a 
pity when a hundred thousand valiant Americans 
wanted to follow the doughty Colonel into France 
to fight for democracy that this honor and privi- 
lege was not accorded to them? What if he was 
not the most technical soldier? Foch risked his 
reputation upon the military axiom that battles 
are not won materially but morally. 

Verily, it was not another term in the White 
House that he was after, but as a father, husband, 
patriot, and friend of humanity he wanted to have 
a personal part in demolishing that nest of bloody 
Berlin bandits, and in humiliating the Kaiser 
demon in whose palace Roosevelt had been himself 
a guest. 

This warm-hearted, affectionate man did not 
have a fiber of cowardice in his nature. When a 
Y. M. C. A. worker asked a hut full of Sammies in 
France to write on a slip of paper what they con- 
sidered the greatest sin, every soldier wrote down 
"Cowardice" in the first place. To Roosevelt 
cowardice was the unpardonable sin — and be- 
longed only to poltroons and perfidy. A few 
months ago he wrote to a friend in California that 
he earnestly agreed with the picturesque Davy 
Crockett when he said, "How I do love a man who 



168 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

aint afeered!" Roosevelt was always "the man 
not afraid." 

On the threshold of his political career, when a 
beardless youth in the New York Assembly, he 
was not afraid to prefer charges against a corrupt 
jurist, and he persisted, against the advice of his 
party leaders, until the corrupt judge deservedly 
lost his place on the bench. 

Some people did not like what they called his 
"impulsive bellicosity," but there were many per- 
sons in this country who were afraid of this fear- 
less man. He was both a corrective and a pre- 
ventive, and no man in public life was ever so suc- 
cessful in "calling a spade a spade," and at the 
same time in maintaining his good nature and even 
the respect of the very people he sometimes caus- 
tically criticized. 

If he was always as courageous, and sometimes 
as startling as a thunderbolt, he was also as trans- 
parent as a sunbeam. The inspiration of his 
courage was his confident trust in God, his ardent 
faith in his fellows, and his radiant nationality. 
0, he was an American! A glowing, a magnificent 
American! 

He was our King Arthur of the Round Table of 
American Knighthood, ever ready to leap into the 
jousts and measure his shining lance with the 
enemies of true patriotism. His magnetic mascu- 
linity aroused the devotion of men and his chival- 
rous gallantry the admiration of women. 

He had the prophetic, almost uncanny instinct 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 169 

of an Isaiah and the godly valor of an Elijah, 
Woe to the modern prophets of Baal who encoun- 
tered the unswerving faith and defiant fidelity of * 
this mighty man of God. 

While he was quick to resent an insult or an in- 
jury, he never vindictively nursed an enmity. 
Men loved him for his magnanimity and trusted 
him for his sincerity. Theodore Roosevelt was 
our beau-ideal of stalwart manliness. 

He carried a copy of Plutarch's Lives in his side 
pocket, and became more heroic as he associated 
with the world's master builders of a former gen- 
eration; and Bunyan's "Greatheart" was another 
of his soul ideals; and one of the maxims of his life 
was, "Better faithful than famous." 

His fearlessness made him a natural leader. 
While other public men were cautiously waiting 
and weighing the results of their actions, Theodore 
Roosevelt hastened to discharge what he felt to be 
his duty regardless of his own political welfare, 
and about the only bitter things he ever said were 
in sharp, staccato, almost angry denunciation of 
cowardly men. Ifimagine he thought that the only 
persons who were certain to go to everlasting per- 
dition were cowards. 

And because "the bravest are the tenderest" 
never was a father more lovingly devoted to his 
children and loved by them. And the children of 
Oj^ster Bay will be lonesome without their good 
friend who was each returning Christmas the jolly, 
old village Santa Claus. And those who know say 



170 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

that behind the usual happy exterior of this public 
man there was a broken heart which hastened his 
untimely end because of the death of his brave 
aviator son. 

Once at the White House, when a silly society 
woman asked one of the Roosevelt boys if it were 
not disagreeable to associate with common boys 
in the public school, the child quickly replied, 
"My papa says there are only tall boys and short 
boys and good boys and bad boys, and that's all 
the kind of boys there are." 

No doubt there will be many permanent and 
pretentious memorials of marble and bronze 
erected in honor of this most typical of Americans, 
but there will be none which could give to Mr. 
Roosevelt, if he were alive, half the personal grati- 
fication of the testimonial which his own children 
prepared for him when he returned victorious from 
the Spanish-American War. When he reached 
his home on Sagamore Hill he found all of his chil- 
dren congregated about a pole, from which floated 
a large flag which they had made with their own 
childish hands, and upon it was the inscription, 
"To Colonel Roosevelt." 

It is said that the bronze visaged leader of the 
Rough Riders was moved to tears by this tender 
tribute of his own precious children. 

I do not for a moment question the high motives 
of the courageous Rough Rider. He was a cham- 
pion of humanity and nothing was foreign to him 
that concerned the welfare of the world. Hence 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 171 

he spoke strong words against race suicide, and 
even in the Sorbonne in Paris, he said, "The 
greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and 
the severest of all condemnations should be visited 
upon the willful sterile. The first essential in any 
civilization is that the man and woman shall be 
father and mother of healthy children, so that the 
race shall increase and not decrease." 

And in that same lecture he said, "Shame on the 
man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to 
develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for 
doing the rough work of a workaday world." And 
it was truly a notable and prophetic utterance, 
when visiting the Berlin University in May, 1910, 
he said, "Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe 
to the nation that does not make ready to hold its 
own in time of need against all who would harm it; 
and woe thrice to the nation in which the average 
man loses the righting edge, loses the power to 
serve as a soldier if the day of need should 
arise." 

In November, 1915, he said, bitterly indignant 
because America was to him unreasonably slow in 
entering the war: "Let us realize that the words of 
the weakling and the coward, of the pacifist and 
the poltroon are worthless to stop wrongdoing. 
Wrongdoing will only be stopped by men who are 
brave as well as just, who put honor above safety, 
who are true to a lofty ideal of duty, who prepare 
in advance to make their strength effective, and 
who shrink from no hazard, not even the hazard of 



172 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

war, if necessary, in order to serve the great cause 
of righteousness." 1 

He was always talking about justice, and the 
nation did not hear any better preaching than that 
which came from the lips of this Christian layman. 

In May, 1910, when Mr. Roosevelt visited the 
young men at Cambridge University in England 
and was asked by them to talk about the conditions 
of success as demonstrated in his own career, he 
spoke to them frankly and most entertainingly. 
While he acknowledged that often there was an ele- 
ment of chance and that circumstances sometimes 
played an important part in success, he made this 
same notable statement: 

"There are two kinds of success. One is the very 
rare kind that comes to a man who has the power 
to do what no one else has the power to do. That 
is genius. I am not discussing what form that 
genius takes; whether it is the genius of a man who 
can write a poem that no one else can write (The 
Ode on a Grecian Urn,' for example, or 'Helen, 
thy beauty is to me') or of a man who can do 
one hundred yards in nine and three-fifths seconds. 
Such a man does what no one else can do. Only 
a very limited amount of the success of life comes 
to persons possessing genius. The average man 
who is successful — the average statesman, the 
average public servant, the average soldier, who 
wins what we call great success — is not a genius. 
He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities 

1 "Fear God and Take Your Own Part," p. 383. 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 173 

that he shares with his fellows, but who has de- 
veloped those ordinary qualities to a more than 
ordinary degree." 

And in concluding his practical and intimate 
address he said: "I don't think any President ever 
enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I 
don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself 
more. I have enjoyed my life and my work 
because I thoroughly believe that success — the 
real success — does not depend upon the position 
you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that 
position. There is no man here to-day who has 
not the chance so to shape his life after he leaves 
this university that he shall have the right to feel 
when his life ends that he has made a real success 
of it; and his making a real success of it does not 
in the least depend upon the prominence of the 
position he holds." 

Private and unsophisticated citizens who visit 
Washington city are sometimes shocked beyond 
measure to hear of certain social scandals which 
sometimes involve men in high position, but in all 
the long public life of Theodore Roosevelt there 
has never been a suspicion against his private 
habits or character. Plutarch said long ago that 
"Caesar's wife should be above suspicion." Mr. 
Roosevelt's character was absolutely unblem- 
ished in all his public career. He was never for 
an instant suspected of greed or graft, and, like 
his lamented predecessor McKinley, he was always 
a tender husband, and an affectionate father, and 



174 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

a gallant home defender. He was an old-fash- 
ioned Christian politician and statesman of such 
high morality that even his worst enemies could 
find no openings in his armor as an upright and 
consistent Christian nobleman. 

No fair-minded person will ever question the 
high motives and integrity of Theodore Roose- 
velt. A discriminating study of the character 
of this Christian statesman will reveal the simple 
truth that the strong sentiment of the ancient 
prophet Micah was fundamental in his life. If we 
should be as fair to him as he endeavored con- 
tinually to be to others, we must acknowledge 
that Theodore Roosevelt earnestly sought to "do 
justly," and to "love mercy," and to "walk hum- 
bly" with his God. In the spring of 1918, when 
the whole world was hanging in the balance, 
he said, "The times are too big to warrant small 
motives." From the moment of his entrance as 
a boy in the early twenties into the political life 
of his State until he became the most conspicuous 
figure in a world full of big men, there never was a 
time when for Roosevelt the times were not "too 
big for small motives." 

While we do not often think of him as a humble 
man, yet such was the case, and his humility made 
him the typical democrat. He was always found 
to be approachable and courteous. Booker T. 
Washington, a child of slavery, was as welcome at 
his dining table as Mr. Harriman the railroad mag- 
nate, and capitalists and labor leaders were 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 175 

equally honored in his councilroom. He was in 
continual conferences with men who had expert 
knowledge on any subjects which had to do with 
humanity and government. 

Because he was human and because he was al- 
ways doing things and saying something, of course 
he would be likely to make some mistakes, but 
even his most virulent political enemy never dared 
to challenge the intentional high purpose of our 
typical American. He followed the leadings of 
divine ideals which beckoned to him from the 
heights, and he saw them because his eyes were 
steadfastly fixed upon the skies. 

It is a wonder that a man of such impetuosity 
and pronounced opinions did not make more pub- 
lic blunders in judgment and administration. It 
is to be deeply regretted that for a time he left the 
party affiliations which had given him his great 
opportunity, and it was hardly less than a tragedy 
in friendship when he withdrew his support from 
his life-time friend and confidant, Mr. Taft, but 
all of that can now be passed over, because repara- 
tions, and reconciliations, and adjustments were 
so satisfactorily made that if he had lived, Mr. 
Roosevelt would without a doubt have been the 
candidate of his reunited party for the Presi- 
dency. And no finer eulogy and more discrim- 
inating and affectionate characterization of the 
departed hero will be written than that which Mr. 
Taft issued immediately upon the death of his 
friend. It was another beautiful attachment of 



176 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

David and Jonathan — it was "Theodore and Will" 
— a friendship so true and tender that it could stand 
even the strain of a temporary estrangement. 
They were both big men, and Mr. Taft is more 
colossal than ever. Concerning his old friend he 
says: "He sent his four boys forth to war with the 
pride of a Roman tribune. Through his father's 
tears for Quentin's death there shone the stern 
joy that a son of his had been given to die the 
death he would himself have sought on the field 
of battle in his country's cause. Theodore Roose- 
velt's example of real sacrifice was of inestimable 
value to our country in this war. The nation has 
lost the most commanding, the most original, the 
most interesting and the most brilliant personality 
in American public life since Lincoln." 

The solemn truth is that Theodore Roosevelt, 
like McKinley and Garfield and the immortal 
Lincoln, was another supreme sacrifice for liberty. 
Lincoln made his sacrificial offering at the close of 
the Civil War, and McKinley after the Spanish- 
American War, and Theodore Roosevelt after the 
greatest world war. It is said that the death of 
one of his sons in France and the severe wound of 
another so grieved the heart of this proud and 
affectionate father that the disease which had 
troubled him since his scientific explorations in 
South America was aggravated, and on that 
night, even while he was in deep slumber, he 
slipped away — another martyr for democracy and 
righteousness. It is not forgotten that he had 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 177 

borne for years a wound in his body inflicted by a 
would-be assassin, but happily his life was pro- 
longed until he was enabled to engraft upon the 
public conscience many of his exalted national 
ideas. 

There was no knight of the Round Table who 
was more magnificently chivalrous than Theodore 
Roosevelt. He was as stalwart and true as King 
Arthur, as pure and noble as Sir Percival. He 
was the avowed enemy of every person and thing 
which was evil. President Benjamin Harrison 
appointed him a United States Civil Service 
Commissioner, and he used to say of him that the 
only trouble he ever had with him was that Roose- 
velt wanted to put a prompt end to all the evils 
under the sun between sunrise and sunset. It was 
not easy for him to be patient with wrong condi- 
tions which could be quickly corrected if brave 
men would only stand up and demand their 
rights. 

I do not say that Theodore Roosevelt was a 
Fortinbras. In fact, I think he was a bigger, 
brainier, better, a far more princely man than For- 
tinbras, but I do say he was not a weak, vacillating, 
invertebrate, procrastinating Hamlet. Roosevelt 
was a tremendous dynamo of action — always ac- 
tion. His life was a succession of action and re- 
action, but always action in some form. He never 
reached one goal without seeing another goal 
farther on, toward which his energetic spirit fared 
away. 



178 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

I had an opportunity to observe at close range 
the true nobility of Mr. Roosevelt in Buffalo, when 
President McKinley was mortally wounded by 
the hand of a misguided assassin. At the first it 
was thought that Mr. McKinley could not live, 
and Mr. Roosevelt, as Vice-President, hastened to 
Buffalo. But when the physicians became more 
hopeful, and even trusted that the wounded man 
might make a successful recovery, Mr. Roosevelt, 
with the fine instincts of propriety, and to correct 
any impression that he was staying around Buffalo 
awaiting the honors which the tragedy of the Presi- 
dent's death might thrust upon him, quickly 
departed; and when, after a few days, it became 
evident that Mr. McKinley could not live, it was 
with utmost difficulty that Mr. Roosevelt was 
located in his retreat in the Adirondack Moun- 
tains. He hastened to Buffalo, and on September 
14, 1901, after the death of his chief, he took the 
oath of office. I well remember Mr. Roosevelt at 
the funeral services in Buffalo. His grief and 
humility were most sincere. He stood at the head 
of the casket, and as the brief service closed, in 
clear and reverent tones the President-elect joined 
with the minister in the Lord's Prayer, and im- 
mediately the entire company which filled the 
house were uniting in the comforting words of the 
familiar prayer. The multitudinous lovers of Mc- 
Kinley, who fondly pronounced him the ideal 
American, because of the attitude and spirit of 
his successor found it not difficult to transfer their 



ROMANCE OF MAKING A LIFE 179 

allegiance and support to Theodore Roosevelt, the 
noble, typical American. 

He was fervently and almost extravagantly ad- 
mired and loved by all the people. His familiar 
sobriquet of "Teddy" and "T. R." indicated how 
near he was to the heart of the American people. 
In his passing, the whole nation, women as well as 
men, the poor as well as the rich, the ignorant as 
well as the learned, the plebeian as well as the 
patrician, and even many of his political enemies, 
are sorely and sincerely bereaved. 

He was a truly great man, and the future of a 
nation is assured which has the resourcefulness and 
virility to produce men of the courage, caliber, con- 
victions, character, and chivalry of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

We will be lonesome without "Teddy" ! 
"Put out the light !" These were his last words. 
So anxious was he to live, and so much had he yet 
to do; and so much of a warrior was he to the end 
that the only way Death could be sure to get him, 
was to steal upon him in the darkness of the night 
when the light was out, and when he was in help- 
less and unconscious sleep. 

" 'Put out the light!' Although the stars were dim, 
What need of feeble flickering lamps to him 
In that high-altared hour? The touch of sleep 
Had brought remembrance of his tryst to keep — 
A morning tryst — with God's gray messenger. 
No sound — no cry — no hesitating stir; 
His fearless soul long since had knelt and kissed 
A waiting Cross; had borne it through life's mist 



180 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

From an unlighted lone Gethsemane 
To the Christ-hallowed crest of Calvary. 

" 'Put out the light!' Men smile through falling tears, 

Remembering the courage of his years 

That stood, each one, for God, humanity 

And covenanted world-wide Liberty! 

The nation mourns. Laurel the chancel rail; 

Muffle the drums. Columbia's banners trail 

Their grieving folds; but memories of him flame 

And light the deathless glory of his name. 
" 'Put out the light!' He needs it not who won 

A place of permanence within the sun!" 1 

And when he answered the early morning sum- 
mons there was plenty of light shining through the 
darkness from the golden city of God, and a re- 
assuring voice which said, "Well done, good and 
faithful servant." 

"He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again." 

Yes, we are already lonesome without "Teddy." 



1 Edith Daley. 



X 

THE NEW MORALITY 



Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning 
— an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring 
the distance we have run, but without any observation of the 
heavenly bodies. — Longfellow. 

Stitch — stitch — stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt; 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch — 
Would that its tone could reach the rich! — 

She sang this "Song of the Shirt." 

— Thomas Hood. 

Disease is the retribution of outraged nature. — Hosea Ballou. 



CHAPTER X 

THE NEW MORALITY 

A generation ago a somewhat conspicuous 
man, after he had listened to a scathing rebuke, by 
a faithful preacher, of the prevailing evils of the 
day of which fashionable society was especially 
guilty, with hot indignation denounced the utter- 
ances of the sermon by saying, "Things have come 
to a strange pass in the world when religion pro- 
poses to interfere with a man's private life." 

It seems anomalous that any one could ever 
have supposed that a person could be a good 
churchman and at the same time an unmoral, and 
even an immoral, man in his personal life. It 
must, however, be charitably remembered that 
nearly all noblest ideals often have passed through 
long periods of evolution. Human slavery, which 
is now universally acknowledged to deserve John 
Wesley's characterization as "the sum of all vil- 
lianies," was once regarded as a bulwark of the 
social organism. 

It is not many years ago since alcohol was 
considered a useful and necessary stimulant 
and tonic, and it was regarded as highly im- 
pertinent for any person to propose to legally 
regulate the manufacture and sale of liquors, and 
was considered offensively fanatical for anyone 

183 



184 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

to suggest that there should be any legislation 
concerning how much, and when, and where any- 
individual should indulge his taste and appetite 
for strong drink. A generation ago even a great 
political party denounced any such proposed pro- 
cedure as sumptuary legislation, and asked for 
the suffrage of the people on that issue. But 
to-day, not only as a war but as a peace measure, 
America will soon be dry from the Pacific to the 
Atlantic, and the reform of Prohibition is sweeping 
so mightily over the earth that in a few decades, 
it is safe to prognosticate, alcohol as a beverage 
will be driven out of the world into the limbo where 
feudalism, and Kaiserism, and human slavery, 
and thuggism are now submerged in oblivion. 

The liquor traffic was wrong in principle because 
it licensed a few men to commercially exploit the 
natural appetite of men, and to make money at 
the expense of the health and homes and morals 
of their fellow men. The past tense is used be- 
cause any statement will soon be out of date which 
refers to the curse of alcohol as a present evil. 

This is the New Morality, and along with alco- 
hol militarism also is fast retreating from the 
abodes of men. The League of Nations will pro- 
vide better means for the settlement of national 
and international disputes than a return to the 
sanguinary methods of barbarism and Prussianism. 
With eight millions of brave men buried in the 
recent battlefields of Europe, and millions of sur- 
vivors incapacitated by the casualties of conflict, 



THE NEW MORALITY 185 

and with millions of broken hearts at home, and 
with widespread devastation from which there 
cannot be a recovery for generations, and with 
tragic losses which are forever irreparable, mur- 
derous war has made itself forever impossible. It 
was a fearful and unspeakable price to pay to con- 
vince mankind that there is a better way. This 
is also the New Morality. 

Turning our attention now to conditions which 
still continue to menace the peace and happiness 
and prosperity and individual rights of mankind, 
it is evident that as the scepter of the New Moral- 
ity increases its humane and kindly sway, another 
great curse will have to be driven out. It is an 
evil which while it is an effect is likewise the cause 
of much of the discomfort and degeneracy of the 
human family, and of the anarchy and revolution 
which now threaten the peace of the world. This 
evil is poverty. In the new day poverty must be 
abolished. Is this practicable? Is it possible? 
If we were to at once prove that it is impossible, 
we could go about and accomplish it at once, for 
to do the impossible is our heaven-commissioned 
task. To abolish poverty is an equally high ideal 
with the abolition of anarchy and militarism. The 
drastic reconstruction of war times gave the 
country meatless and wheatless days, lightless 
nights, and sweetless meals, all strictly imposed 
and gladly regarded that the war-riven countries 
might be saved from starvation, and that the 
fighting men might have plenty of good, sustaining 



186 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

food; and the heaviest taxes in the history of the 
world have been willingly accepted upon incomes 
large and small, with hardly a protest and with no 
intimation of confiscation — all this in order to 
make the world a safe place in which to live. Is it 
not equally as practicable to adopt a similar scale 
of taxation upon the surplus wealth of the nation 
in order that multitudes of men and women and 
children who have not enough shall be provided 
for by those who have more than they need? 

When the exigencies of war made big minds 
necessary to devise and administer just schemes for 
railroad operation and food conservation and in- 
come taxation, men of marked ability readily 
offered themselves to the service of the govern- 
ment. The problem of poverty will require the 
same devotion and sacrifice from the men of great 
souls and great intellects. No haphazard, desul- 
tory, spasmodic methods will suffice. Every in- 
dividual case, either of one person or of a family, 
must be carefully studied and tabulated, and such 
provision made as will stimulate the earning capac- 
ity and give assistance without encouraging in- 
dolence. Indiscriminate giving to the poor per- 
petuates poverty and irritates rather than heals 
the wound. 

Our gifts should not pauperize but personal- 
ize — they should strengthen and lengthen the 
arm and not shorten and enervate it. Before 
poverty can be abolished there must be a more 
equal distribution of wealth. The wealth of 



THE NEW MORALITY 187 

this nation reaches into the multiplied millions. 
Of this vast amount it is said that one fifth is 
owned by three per cent of the people, one half by- 
nine per cent, and less than one third of the 
wealth is owned by ninety-one per cent of the 
people. About half of the families in the United 
States are not property owners; seven-eighths of the 
families own only one eighth of the wealth, and 
the startling statement is made that one per cent 
of the families own more property than the re- 
maining ninety-nine per cent. 

Manifestly, here is a condition which will need 
the shrewd statesmanship of the most unselfish 
and brilliant citizens to understand and correct. 

Is it not evident that the heavier taxes should be 
paid by those who profit by the "unearned incre- 
ment" of their own unimproved property, and less 
tax should be levied upon the improvements on the 
land? 

All over this country there are people vastly 
benefiting by simply allowing their land to be un- 
sold and unimproved, while those who with much 
economy are building their homes are paying ad- 
ditional taxes for thus adding to the beauty of the 
city and the value of its real estate. 

The slums must be abolished. Foul homes can- 
not produce pure characters. The crowded tene- 
ment house ought soon to be a thing of the past. 
In positive self-defense the city will be compelled 
to colonize the slums, and if necessary furnish free 
transportation from suburban colonies to places of 



188 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

work in the city. The submerged tenth need pure 
air and sunshine. It is now a generation since 
George Peabody furnished more than five thou- 
sand homes for the artisan and laboring classes of 
London, available at easy rental terms. In this is 
the practical suggestion of what can be done to 
relieve the congested sections of the cities. The 
Peabody fund has doubled since it was first given 
by the princely benefactor. Such benefactions are 
not alms, they furnish opportunity, and prove in 
the end to be a good business investment. It is 
not alms that the poor want, but opportunity, 
not charity, but a chance. Men are not all born 
leaders, or even provident. The man who lacks 
initiative is often a first-class workman, but some- 
body has to plan for him, and help him to find the 
task for which he is fitted. 

All men are born equal before the law; but in 
physical and mental strength, in business qualifica- 
tions, in ability to make a dollar and save a part of 
it, in resourcefulness and ingenuity, men are born 
very unequal; and those who are strong in these 
things should bear the infirmities of the weak — ■ 
that's the New Morality. 

The abolition of poverty is not the wild dream of 
an impracticable visionary. Plutarch says that 
in Athens during the time of Solon there were 
none who asked for alms, and that no citizen lived 
or died in want; and that this was owing to the 
laws against idleness and prodigality, and the care 
which the Areopagus took that every man should 



THE NEW MORALITY 189 

have a visible livelihood. What was done in the 
classic days of pagan Greece certainly ought to be 
duplicated in the modern cities of Christian 
America. 

Proudhon, the modern French philosopher, only 
encourages anarchy and dynamite when he says: 
"Property is robbery." Property should mean 
industry, frugality, peace, opportunity, and bless- 
ing, and if to any man property means robbery, 
that man should be peremptorily punished. 

Henry George 1 tells of a very rich man who said 
to a newspaper man at the completion of a large 
enterprise out of which he had made millions, 
"We have been particularly favored by Divine 
Providence; iron never was so cheap before, and 
labor was a drug in the market." 

This selfish old Crcesus was thus glad to profit at 
the expense of a cheap wage to labor; and made his 
blighting avarice more contemptible and igno- 
minious by charging it up to Divine Providence. 

Humanity has indeed fallen among the thieves of 
poverty and woe and disease. In these days of 
abundance and great fortunes the helpless should 
be cared for and the indolent should be compelled 
to work. It is the imperative duty of the man with 
vast riches to solve the problem of the man of vast 
poverty, for it is more often the case that neither 
deserves either honor or contempt for his condi- 
tion; one may be the victim, and the other the 
beneficiary of circumstances. 

1 Social Problems, p. 105. 



190 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Not long since, under the shadow of Brooklyn 
Bridge, in a garret room, by the dull light of an oil 
lamp, sat a woman double stitching seamed over- 
alls for four cents a pair. By her side sat a pinch- 
faced large-eyed child of four years, who by sewing 
on buttons enabled her mother to earn three dol- 
lars and seventy-five cents in a week of fourteen 
hours a day for seven days. Do you wonder that 
when a kind-faced woman came with a ministry of 
love, she was met with: "God! Why do you 
preach to me of God? I tell you there is no God 
for the poor — no heaven. There is no hell except 
this life, and no devils except the men who grind 
the lives of women and children into dollars and 
cents!" 

It is a strange comment on our selfishness that 
we have been so slow in equalizing our surplus 
wealth among those who have not enough; but, 
thank God, the heart of humanity grows kindlier 
as the years hurry. Submerging poverty seems to 
have more compensations than enervating wealth, 
but it is the elimination of both of these evils which 
we should seek that the happy consummations in 
all walks of life may be greater. 

I think it was quaint old Walt Whitman who said 
one day, "Half of my coat is mine" — and society 
will some day be reconstructed upon the scriptural 
principle that "we that are strong ought to bear the 
infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves." 
Certainly, it is only social equity that if my 
brother is starving, and naked, and lonely, then 



THE NEW MORALITY 191 

only "half of my coat is mine," for the other half 
belongs to him; and he should as well have a place 
at my comfortable fireside, and in one of my extra 
beds. " Whoso hath this world's goods and seeth 
his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels 
of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of 
God in him?" More persons are losing their hap- 
piness in life because they will not share with 
others than because they are openly committing 
sin. There are few sins more heinous and deadly 
than selfishness. God will more quickly forgive 
the excess of some natural appetite or passion than 
he will forgive us for not ministering to a worthy 
humanity about us, who would be happy and com- 
fortable if they could only have our surplus, which 
we do not need, and which usually goes in extrava- 
gant indulgences. How much of my coat is mine? 

Yes, "half of my coat is mine." It was a bitter 
winter night when a Russian soldier was battling 
his way with difficulty to his barracks through a 
blinding storm. Suddenly his path was ob- 
structed by a poor, unfortunate man who was per- 
ishing in the cold. Immediately the brave soldier 
removed his warm military cloak, and with his 
sharp sword he severed it in twain, and handing a 
part of it to the suffering stranger, he said, "Half 
for thee and half for me." 

That night, as the soldier was sleeping on his 
cot, a vision filled his rude cell with heavenly light, 
and Jesus, the Lord, appeared to him, and, in 
words of ineffable sweetness, he spoke to him and 



192 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

said, "Half of thy coat thou didst give to me, and 
part of my glory I will share with thee." 

If we would have comradeship with our Lord, 
and if we would enjoy the exquisite brightness of 
his radiant presence, it will be only as we gener- 
ously minister to those whom harsh and cruel cir- 
cumstances have deprived of the joys, and comforts, 
and necessities of life! "Half of my coat is mine!" 

Poverty will some day be abolished and the 
prayer of Agur will be realized: "Give me neither 
poverty nor riches." That is part of the New 
Morality. 

Many deserving men by reason of their limita- 
tions cannot earn money enough to properly care 
for their families. There should be a fund built 
up from a reasonable taxation upon the incomes of 
the prosperous by which bounties could be wisely 
given in addition to the wages of those worthy 
men whose earning capacity is not equal to their 
sacred obligations. This is the New Morality. 

The first great and notable victory which Gen- 
eral Pershing won for the cause of humanity, and 
one which made his later triumphs all the more cer- 
tain, if not inevitable, was in the successful cam- 
paign which he waged against immorality among 
the American soldiers in France. He has the dis- 
tinction of being the first great military com- 
mander to fully appreciate the significance of com- 
bating and preventing impurity and consequent 
diseases in the army. 

From time immemorial we have heard of the 



THE NEW MORALITY 193 

necessary evil and among soldiers in particular it 
was believed to be utterly impossible to prevent 
more or less dissolute living. To begin with 
things fundamental, of course there is no such 
thing as a necessary evil; only good is necessary. 
The fact that a thing is evil is evidence that it is 
not in harmony with the purposes of nature, and 
is, therefore, not necessary and permanent. Evil 
is not the rule of the universe, but law and order 
and goodness. Evil prevails only when proud 
man interposes his haughty, defiant will. If only 
evil were found in nature, the universe would soon 
be enveloped in chaos. It is obedience to law, 
which is the same as saying obedience to goodness, 
which sustains all force and energy. Evil in the 
moral realm is disobedience to the order which is 
necessary for stability and progress. It is good 
which is necessary; there is not a single evil which 
is necessary; anything which is necessary is good, 
and its product is goodness. The social evil, 
whether in the army or out of it, is not a necessity 
to the well-being of society; on the contrary, it is 
an acknowledged menace and curse, the penalty of 
which is an abomination of disease which in some 
medical books is designated a plague. 

Nothing is necessary which debauches the mind 
and the body, and which transforms respectable, 
and useful, and healthful humans into miserable 
degenerates. Prove anything to be necessary, 
and you have proved it to be benign, and benevo- 
lent, and stimulating, and ennobling. 



194 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

Those who have opposed the social evil in the 
past have frequently been denounced as prudes 
and Puritans and fanatics. Upon the false hypo- 
thesis that only regulation was the sensible and 
practical procedure, many of the European army 
authorities provided for what were considered the 
physical requirements of the soldiers. In France 
for many decades it has been agreed that prohibi- 
tion was impossible, and so a system of licenses 
and inspection was adopted. 

General Pershing was intrusted by the mothers 
of America with millions of their sons. Most of 
these young men were hardly more than boys; 
many of them were still in school. The big sol- 
dier dared to face the skepticism and derision of 
those army officials who stood for toleration, and 
regulation, and inspection, and declared himself a 
firm believer in enforced prohibition. He adopted 
drastic methods of suppression, and punishment, 
and education. He has demonstrated that this 
evil is no more a necessary evil than any other evil. 
The vicinity of the camps was placed under stern 
and vigorous surveillance. "The measures were 
thorough and without parallel." Officers who 
contracted disease were court-martialed. One 
commander who accepted an offer to take over a 
licensed house for American soldiers was removed 
and the despicable house was put "out of bounds." 
"An order urging sexual continence and the main- 
tenance of high moral standards of living was fol- 
lowed by search for brothels, the stationing of mili- 



THE NEW MORALITY 195 

tary police to refuse access to whole districts which 
had been put out of bounds, the enforcing of sci- 
entific treatment of men who had been exposed, 
and punishment for all who evaded treatment or 
disobeyed prohibitory regulations." 

It can be stated on the authority of Raymond B. 
Fosdick, who was chairman of the Commission on 
Training Camp Activities, that in one French port 
where the disreputable houses had been open for 
three months and were then closed for three 
months, the rate of disease decreased from 
sixteen to two per thousand men. Under the 
regime of the brave general, diseases from im- 
morality became almost negligible. In France 
three hospitals with one thousand beds each had 
been built and equipped to treat the Americans 
who contracted social diseases, and not one of 
those three hospitals was ever used. In one group 
of seven thousand four hundred and one men there 
was only one case of venereal disease developed in 
seven weeks. 

After trying out his high Christian purpose in 
this problem, which has baffled military officers and 
civilian statesmen for generations, General Per- 
shing says that it is now his profound conviction, 
based upon experience, that "abolition, as distin- 
guished from regulation, is the only effective mode 
of combating this age-long evil." 

This is a momentous statement and marks an 
epoch in the progress of morality. The war is now 
over, but General Pershing's demonstration re- 



106 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

mains, and in these reconstruction days which are 
following the war shall it not be one of the pur- 
poses and goals of the New Morality to go after 
the social evil and completely eradicate it just as 
slavery and alcohol have been prohibited, and just 
as poverty and disease and crime must be reduced 
to the vanishing point? 

Shall it be said that it was safer for our boys to 
be in the army with a chance of being killed but 
protected from social vices than to be at home in 
beautiful and home-loving America? The men- 
ace of immorality can be and should be peremp- 
torily removed. Every city and town in America 
should be thoroughly purged until the curse of im- 
purity and the wide-spreading plague shall en- 
tirely disappear from a country which has been 
too long cursed with this blighting leprous misery. 

Despicable as the priest and Levite who passed 
by on the other side may appear to be to us to-day, 
yet with covered faces we are compelled to confess 
that the wails and wounds and squalor and pro- 
fanities and impurities of the poor and sinful have 
sometimes aroused revulsion and not compassion 
in our bosoms. We must keep a large heart brim- 
ful of tenderness, or our aversion for filth will make 
us disgusted with the poor, and our aversion for 
intemperance will make us disgusted with the 
drunken, and our abhorrence for impurity will 
make us disgusted with the fallen, and our indig- 
nation against hypocrisy will make us disgusted 
with the hypocrite. 



THE NEW MORALITY 197 

Until we have overcome a natural repulsion for 
the odors, scenes, and foulness of those suffering 
from poverties and sins, we do all of our bene- 
factions by proxy. We delegate to various organi- 
zations our ministries by furnishing money for 
others to dispense; but the really "good" Samaritan 
renders a personal service by himself binding up 
the wounds, and pouring in the healing oil, and 
placing the unfortunate traveler on his own beast, 
and bringing him to an inn, 

"Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

Some years ago Mr. Moody made a humiliating 
and tearful confession one night when he was hold- 
ing a meeting in Santa Cruz, California. It was in 
the spring of 1899. On his way from Oakland to 
Santa Cruz there came into the train a company 
of young men who filled the coach with their pro- 
fanity and the fumes of liquor, and one noisy man 
had a badly bruised, bleeding face and a swollen 
eye. This repulsive-looking fellow immediately 
recognized Mr. Moody and began to sing some of 
Moody's songs, and to indulge in jokes and jibes 
against the great evangelist. Mr. Moody became 
very indignant and seized his handbag and de- 
nounced the whole proceedings and went into 
another part of the car. After a while the con- 
ductor came in, and he persuaded the fellow with 
the bruised face and swollen eye to go with him 
into the baggage car, where the conductor bathed 



198 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

his wounds, and before long the poor fellow had 
dropped off to sleep. That night Mr. Moody pub- 
licly confessed his chagrin and sorrow that he had 
utterly failed to act the part of the good Samaritan 
to this pitiable fellow who had indeed fallen among 
the thieves of the liquor traffic. 

The good Samaritan was in a hostile country, 
in which he was hated and ostracized, yet so full 
was his heart of real compassion that he could even 
minister to one of his enemies, and gladly do for 
him what those who were set apart to do failed to 
do. 

In San Francisco not many years ago a news- 
paper reporter, sick and friendless and alone, was 
much surprised when one day Robert Louis Ste- 
venson came to his bedside and said to him : "I sup- 
pose you are like all of us — you don't keep your 
money. I thought you might want a little loan 
as between one man of letters and another — eh?" 

I come more and more to believe that if any per- 
son would be a good Jew, or a good Gentile, or a 
good Protestant, or a good Catholic, or a good 
American, or a good Britisher, he must first of all, 
and always, be a good Samaritan. 

It is not easy to divest some very devout but 
misguided people of the notion that disease is in 
the world as a part of God's disciplinary plan in 
training his people into obedience and righteous- 
ness. But to make our heavenly Father the 
author of disease is just as wicked as to make him 
responsible for all sin and crime. God does not 



THE NEW MORALITY 199 

send disease — it can all be traced to broken laws, 
and it would not be consistent with God's char- 
acter to lead his helpless children into the break- 
ing of laws in order to teach them respect for law. 

Since there are no effects without an antecedent 
cause, all physical and mental ailments are the 
results of established laws which have been ruth- 
lessly or ignorantly disregarded. 

Faithful physicians are diligently seeking to 
find specifics for disease, and their scientific tri- 
umphs lead them to believe that somewhere in 
nature or in chemistry there will be found cures 
and preventives for all the ailments which afflict 
mankind. 

These results cannot be attained by foolishly 
and fanatically declaring that there is no such 
thing as sickness or pain, but in steadily pursuing 
the murderous bacteria of disease until they shall 
be overtaken as were the savage bandits of mili- 
tarism. It should be a part of the New Morality 
to give every possible encouragement to those 
brilliant scientists who are bending over culture 
tubes and often as voluntary exiles in their lab- 
oratories are devoting their extraordinary genius 
to the causes and prevention of disease. They are 
devoted friends of humanity. 

It is gratifying to note that it is announced that 
the Rockefeller Foundation with its endowment 
of one hundred millions of dollars, after diverting 
its activities for four years to war relief and army 
welfare, in which it expended more than twenty 



200 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

millions of dollars, has already resumed its regular 
work of seeking to rid the world of disease. Dis- 
ease belongs in the same category with poverty 
and crime and militarism and diabolism and an- 
archy, and cannot be tolerated in that well-ordered 
condition which lies before the world when all 
people shall seek to regard the laws of their physi- 
cal being with the same reverence as they regard 
the laws of their spiritual natures. 

It is related that New York's most celebrated 
surgeon once went over to a tenement house on the 
East Side and performed an operation upon a little 
girl, who would surely have died but for the well- 
known skill of this brilliant physician. As he was 
leaving the humble apartment the grateful father 
gave him a quarter — it was all he had, but Dr. 
Bull was happier than if he had received a five- 
thousand-dollar fee from a wealthy patient. And 
when that good doctor died a whole city went into 
mourning for him. 

Down at our city jail the other day a trusted 
prisoner was sweeping an outer corridor. The 
quiet eye of an alert guard saw the man stoop 
down and pick up something, and hastily thrust 
it into his blouse. Was it a jewel of value, or a 
shining blade by which he could gain his freedom, 
or a lost coin? The trusty was called to the desk, 
and prison austerity demanded him to show what 
he had so clandestinely concealed about his per- 
son. The man blushed and hesitated, but slowly 
obeyed, and drew out from his bosom a faded rose 



THE NEW MORALITY 201 

— and when the stern countenance of the jailer 
relaxed there was a tear in the eye of the prisoner. 

"What care I for caste or creed? 
It is the deed, it is the deed; 
What for class or what for clan? 
It is the man, it is the man; 
Heirs of love and joy and woe, 
Who is high and who is low? 
Mountain, valley, sky, and sea, 
Are for all humanity. 

"What care I for robe or stole? 
It is the soul, it is the soul; 
What for crown, or what for crest? 
It is the heart within the breast; 
It is the faith, it is the hope, 
It is the struggle up the slope; 
It is the brain and eye to see 
One God and one humanity." 

This is the New Morality! 



XI 

THE NEW DAY 



From marge to marge across the sky, 

God's hand is reaching wide; 
And every tyranny shall die, 
As dies the Tyrant's pride; 
For God's new day is at the dawn, 

His light is on the sky; 
And Liberty is hasting on, 

Where Freedom's guns reply; 
God's glad new day is at the door, 

His skies are white with noon; 
And freedom's winds their fragrance pour, 

Like fragrances of June. 

— Charles Coke Woods. 

Out of eternity this New Day is born. — Thomas Carlyle. 

Each day the world is born anew 
For him who takes it rightly. 

—Lowell. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW DAY 

In the hospitable Hostess House at Camp Kear- 
ny you may see inscribed over the huge fireplace 
with its crackling logs and cordial comfort the 
noble words of the Lifegiver who tasted death for 
every man: "I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly." 

In all nature death abounds that life may much 
more abound. God in his mercy and goodness 
administers a divine law of compensation, in favor 
of order out of chaos, and happiness out of sorrow, 
and light out of darkness, and good out of evil, and 
love out of hate, and life out of death. It is one 
of the miracles of spiritual physics. In nature, 
action and reaction are equal, but God, standing 
within the shadows, keeping watch above his own, 
graciously provides that all the reactions of the 
moral universe shall be more than equal and shall 
steadily advance the interests of order and happi- 
ness and light and goodness and love and life. 
An art critic declares that he reaches all his judg- 
ments as to the merit of music, or painting, or 
sculpture, or literature by one test, "Has the 
hatred of life or the love of life been at work here?" 
Indeed, there can be no other basis of criticism. 
No man who is a misanthrope or a cynic can in- 

206 



206 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

terpret life; only those who are exuberantly in 
love with life can scale its summits or fathom its 
depths. 

I had just reached the writing of this phrase 
"exuberantly in love with life" when the morning 
sun slipped up over the horizon, and spilled its 
golden glory over desk and manuscript and in 
riotous beauty bade the world a radiant good 
morning. Out of the rains and shadows of the 
night a new day was born; the birds attuned their 
songs, and the flowers began to straighten up their 
drooping heads, and the callas lifted up their white 
chalices for a draught of new life. Birds and sky 
and sea, silent mountain and picturesque land- 
scape, barnyard fowl, all awoke in a prompt and 
blissful responsiveness to the source of life and 
light and power and beauty; and the old, new sun 
seemed to say, "I am come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abun- 
dantly." 

Love unlocks all of life's richest treasures, and 
the love of life will reveal the fullness of blessing 
which Christ came to bestow. 

No one can be "exuberantly in love with life" 
and not find his own life enlarging and the lives of 
those about him improved. Life is contagious, 
and we cannot enter into the fullness of life our- 
selves and all life fail to be enriched. 

Christ's message to the world was life and life 
"more abundantly." The mission of Christianity 
in the world all can be compacted in these four 



THE NEW DAY 207 

letters L-I-F-E. Christianity goes into paganism, 
where the blight of death is over all, and saves the 
lives of the babies and the women. It lifts the 
pall which deadens the mental life of ignorance 
and superstition, and it fosters the life of soul 
and spirit. Christianity in civilized lands places 
a steadily higher appraisement on life, and the 
measure of the service of any profession or phil- 
anthropy is its protection and enlargement of 
life. Child-labor must go because it imperils life; 
the liquor traffic is forever doomed because it de- 
stroys life; all vice is despicable because its victim 
is life. None is more highly honored and beloved 
than the faithful physician and surgeon because 
the conservation of life is his one supreme purpose; 
and the greatest triumphs of genius in the late war 
were not in the monstrous fighting machines which 
devastated and destroyed, but in the marvelous 
resourcefulness of the medical corps as they were 
able to conserve and recover the lives of the sol- 
diers. The preventives, cures, and surgical tri- 
umphs have been, indeed, the miracles of the awful 
war. 

This is the day of sacrifice and service, and men 
and nations are finding the supremest goals of hap- 
piness in service and sacrifice. To be sure, for 
years as Christian virtues these graces have been 
inculcated and practiced, but they have now be- 
come the daily exercises of all true citizens and 
patriots. Whoever supposed that for the benefit 
of those whom we have never seen, and for the 



208 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

future prosperity of our own country which we 
may never live to enjoy, our whole nation would 
gladly submit to such heavy restrictions and 
taxes? The American people will never go back 
to a provincial and ironical indifference to what 
have been called foreign missions, or to a cold- 
hearted disregard of those who live in poverty and 
vice in the purlieus of our great cities. Suddenly 
the woes and joys of others have become the joys 
and woes of ourselves. During the war in Bel- 
gium the man in charge of the public food distribu- 
tion station could not find women to do the clean- 
ing and scrubbing. He was directed to the home 
of a noble Belgian woman for advice, where he 
found a group of titled women assembled. When 
he stated that women were not available for these 
menial tasks these elegant women themselves vol- 
unteered, and daily a sufficient number of the 
women reported at the food depot to wash the 
dishes and scrub the floors. It is also told that 
one of the leading society women of New York 
found herself, in one of the Y. M. C. A. huts in 
France, serving coffee to a soldier boy who the 
summer before had been a dining-room servant on 
her private yacht. 

One of the most incomprehensible things in the 
world is that great Christian denominations should 
be kept asunder by some unessential belief or 
polity that has positively nothing to do with sav- 
ing a world from sin. Peter, and Paul, and Con- 
stantine, and Augustine, and Luther, and Wesley, 



THE NEW DAY 209 

and Calvin have rendered mighty service to the 
cause of truth, but when teachers of truth devote 
themselves to Peter alone, they get the Roman 
Church; or to Constantine, the Greek Church; or 
to Luther, the Lutheran Church; or to Calvin, the 
Presbyterian Church; or to Alexander Campbell, 
the Christian Church; or to Wesley, the Methodist 
Church — each with a modicum of truth; but it is 
only when they give themselves wholly to a study 
of the Christ that they get Christianity. 

When we get the real Christ, the Christ of 
Thomas and Philip, the Christ who is "the way, 
the truth and the life," how small do these de- 
nominational differences appear! 

It is Christ and not creed ! Is it not beyond cre- 
dence that a church could be founded upon a theory 
that sudden conversion was the only salvation; or 
that the quantity of water only would determine 
salvation; or that salvation was only for a chosen 
few, when Jesus Christ in his thrilling ministry 
never said a word about the mode of baptism, or 
the time of conversion, or the number of the elect? 
Can we not hear the Master sadly say, "Have I 
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known me, Philip?" 

Christ did not come to save dogma but to save 
life — to save sinners, not to save saints. One 
would like to see the forgetting of all distinctively 
denominational names. It is anomalous that the 
followers of Jesus shall be known as Methodists 
because they are methodical, and Episcopalians 



210 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

because they have bishops, or Congregationalists, 
because their government is vested in the congre- 
gation, or the Presbyterians from a Greek word 
that very few people would recognize if they met 
it in the street, when there is the beautiful, all- 
inclusive name of "Christian," first given to the 
followers of Jesus in derision. 

Only essentials count. Christ is essential ; serv- 
ice is essential; truth is an essential; pardon is an 
essential; vision is an essential; purity is an essen- 
tial; righteousness is an essential; justice is an 
essential; courage is an essential; character is an 
essential; peace is an essential; faith, hope, love are 
essentials. When we take Christ, the Great Es- 
sential, we have all of these. Christianity is 
Christianity — Christ is Christianity. 

Is this New Day to begin with the physical re- 
appearing of Jesus Christ? There are many sin- 
cere people who are confidently looking for the im- 
mediate coming of Christ, that he may set up his 
earthly kingdom, but these are hopes born of the 
misgivings of some of the Master's devoted but 
timid followers. They have persuaded them- 
selves that truth cannot win in the conflict with 
error, that there is not power enough in the gospel 
to save the world from wreck and ruin, and that 
Jesus must come in person to prevent the catastro- 
phe of sin. 

Many persons have never shared in the belief 
that the gospel would lose its power, or the blood 
of Jesus its efficacy to redeem; and hence are not 



THE NEW DAY 211 

thinking of the New Day as being ushered in by the 
physical return of Jesus, but are just as confidently 
believing that the sunburst of the New Day will 
witness such a coming of the spirit of Jesus, and 
such a recognition of the gospel of Christ as have 
never before been known. Christ is the Day 
spring of the New Morning — Christ is the New 
Day. Not Christ appearing in physical person 
in Jerusalem, or Shanghai, or London, or New 
York, or Los Angeles, but Christ coming every- 
where in the power of the truth he taught, and the 
sacrifice he made once and forever two thousand 
years ago; everywhere from Jerusalem to Japan, 
from Damascus to Iceland, from the manger in 
Bethlehem to the crowded tenement in the city 
slums, to the gorgeous palaces of the rich, to the 
haunts of brilliant scholarship. 

Vicarious sacrifice has come to have a new 
meaning in these epochal days. How many there 
are who have suffered and even died that others 
might live, and among the noble martyrs whose 
names will be emblazoned in galaxies of fame we 
think of those just as noble whose sufferings and 
deeds of valor will never be sung. Have you heard 
of the ammunition runners? They were the brave 
men who supplied the daring fighters who went 
over the top and across No Man's Land and into 
the enemy's trenches. These runners kept their 
comrades so well supplied with ammunition that 
any ground which was taken could be held; but 
so furious was the fire that four out of five of those 



212 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

faithful runners were hit and many surrendered 
their lives. 

How many noble souls in the battles of life make 
the supreme sacrifice "unwept, unhonored, and 
unsung"? How many holy women, like beautiful 
Rachel, go down into the valley of motherhood and 
the baby comes back alone? How many brilliant 
investigators, like the lamented Pasteur, willingly 
surrender their own lives that specifics may be 
found for disease? Never has there been an hour 
when men hold to their own lives less tenaciously 
in order that the world may be made a safe place 
in which to live. The Redondo Beach High School 
boy who lost his life at the front, comforted his 
mother when he enlisted in the Marines by saying: 
"Don't worry, mother; we can only die once, and 
one might as well die for his country." And as 
for money, all truly righteous people are despising 
it to-day except for what it will do to advance the 
cause of truth and purchase immunity from suffer- 
ring and autocracy. 

Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote from the 
East to her relatives in Los Angeles that during a 
visit from Mr. Irvin S. Cobb, who had just re- 
turned from the battle front in Europe, he related 
to her the interesting story of how a Negro soldier 
was the first American to receive the Croix de 
Guerre, with the accompanying palm branch deco- 
ration from the French government. Many others 
before him received the cross alone, but the dis- 
tinguished honor has been conferred upon this 



THE NEW DAY 213 

hero in ebony of the additional palm decoration, 
together with the cross. 

Mr. Cobb said that a French general visited the 
hospital where the colored man was recovering 
from wounds received in the brave encounter 
which almost cost him his life, and pinned the 
cross and the palm decoration upon his breast, and 
then the officer stooped down and kissed him upon 
both cheeks. 

In these tragic and memorable days, when yel- 
low men and brown men and black men and white 
men have been fighting side by side in response to 
the call of God and humanity, to make the world a 
safe place for mothers and their babies, and to 
defend democracy from the savage butchers of 
Berlin, is it not time to put aside all racial preju- 
dices and discriminations? 

Yes, a New Day has dawned! There is a new 
resurrection. The men from the front wrote us 
that they found God in the trenches. They told 
us that their doubts all slipped away. Men had 
no trouble in believing in miracles at the front 
because of the many marvelous escapes; and, as 
they were giving their effort and lives for others, a 
long-lost, child-like faith in God crept back into 
their hearts. A soldier said, no doubt depreciating 
his own humble fidelity: "That's a part of the 
glory of the trenches, that even a man who has not 
been very good can crucify himself and hang 
beside Christ in the end." 

Men gave up their lives as easily as they lay 



214 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

down to sleep. When a suffocating gas attack 
was made by the enemy, all the defending soldiers 
clasped on their masks quickly, but there were two 
men, who were at the guns, who could not do ac- 
curate work with their faces covered, and so they 
continued at their posts until they were overcome 
and were carried to the rear; but there were always 
two other men anxious and ready to step into the 
vacant places. 

At the battle of the Somme it was necessary for 
the officers in charge of the artillery to know the 
exact location of the advancing infantry ahead 
of them, in order that reenforcements could be 
brought up and the supporting fire could be 
properly directed. The infantry which had ad- 
vanced too far were signaling messages, and a 
reply must be promptly wigwagged back to them 
in order that they might hold their position until 
the guns could be brought up a little closer. The 
infantry needed to know that reenforcements were 
on the way, that they might hold out a little 
longer. It was certain death to the soldier who 
would signal the message, "Help is coming," to 
the imperiled infantry, for the Huns were spotting 
every head in sight; but the soldier whose duty it 
was to wigwag that message never hesitated an 
instant. He climbed "over the top," ran to a 
slight eminence; unfurled his white flag and sig- 
naled the message, "Hold out — help is coming!" 
And a Hun sniper picked him off. He was a 
Canadian; hardly more than a boy, but "it was 



THE NEW DAY 215 

what he wanted to do." "He saved others, him- 
self he could not save." The soldier who related 
the story said, "That's the kind of peep at God 
we get on the western front. It isn't a sad peep 
either. When men die for something worth while, 
death loses all its terror." 1 

A California boy, a Harvard graduate, wrote a 
long letter from France to his grandmother, telling 
her about their Christmas celebration at the front. 
After most enjoyable Yule-tide festivities three of 
the boys slipped away from the camp and went to 
a village not far away where they might further 
indulge their good Christmas appetites. As they 
were returning homeward in the clear moonlight 
they heard a baby cry, and upon investigation 
found a most poverty-stricken little shack, in 
which was a baby nursing at its mother's bosom, 
and there was a man poorly clad, and evidently 
very tired, asleep on a rude bed on the floor. There 
was every evidence of dire necessity, and the baby 
especially appealed to the soldier boys, for was it 
not the Christmas time? So they counted their 
money and found that one had only a franc, 
another had nothing, and the third had nothing 
less than a hundred-franc note — about twenty dol- 
lars. They felt that the one amount was too small 
and the other too large, and so they departed with- 
out offering any assistance except to express their 
sympathy. As they continued back to the camp 
and went up over a hill the clouds cleared away 

1 Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson. 



216 DAYBREAK EVERYWHERE 

and a particularly large and beautiful star poured 
its bright beams upon them. As they stopped to 
express their admiration, one of the boys sug- 
gested that it was so brilliant and hung so low that 
it reminded him of the Star of Bethlehem that 
directed the steps of the Three Wise Men. And 
with one accord they retraced their steps, these 
three American boys, modern Wise Men of the new 
yet ever old evangel, and came once again to the 
baby and its mother, in a place quite as poor and 
rude as the lowly manger of the long ago, and there 
they poured out all their treasure as did their 
prototypes in Bethlehem. 

Yes, it is a New Day — it is the Day of the 
Greater Love! "Greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
"Der Tag" of Prussianism was a day of slaughter 
and Rightfulness. The New Day of the new 
world will end forever human fiendishness. 

Down at Cape May one day the wire which 
controlled the steering apparatus of a hydro-air- 
plane broke, and the plane plunged fifty feet to 
the ground. The gasoline tanks exploded and the 
machine and its two occupants were enveloped in a 
whirlwind of flame. Ensign Weed quickly un- 
strapped himself and with his clothes afire ran 
toward the ocean, and in a moment he would have 
been safe, but, looking back, he discovered that 
his companion, William Bennett, was still bound 
in the plane. He rushed back and extricated 
Bennett. By this time both men were a mass of 



THE NEW DAY 217 

flames, and the heat was so intense that the crystals 
of their watches were melted. They struggled 
toward the sea. Bennett fell, breaking his nose; 
Weed stumbled, but he succeeded in dragging his 
helpless friend into the water, where the fire was 
soon extinguished. They were hurried to the 
base hospital. Bennett survived nearly a week, 
but heroic Ensign Weed died immediately, not 
from the burns, though they were fearful, but from 
inhaling the flames. Died, and yet he lived, lived 
in that larger and holier life where those men never 
die, who, in response to the Greater Love, gladly, 
promptly, gallantly give up their own lives that 
others may live. Never have there been so many 
Christlike imitations of the Greater Love; and no 
one man ever surrenders his own life that another 
may live, but that all lives are enriched and hal- 
lowed by his sacred sacrifice. This is the holy sig- 
nificance of this New Day. 

When a British soldier was asked, "Where did 
you lose your arm?" he replied quickly, "I did not 
lose it; I gave it." This is the holy spirit of the 
New Day. 

"Out of the shadows of the night, 
The earth rolls into the light; 
It is daybreak everywhere!" 



